With the tightening of restrictions to cruise ships visiting Amsterdam, Rotterdam has seen an increase in the number of cruise ships now visiting this busy port. Welcome to how my wife and I spent time in Rotterdam…
Our visit to Rotterdam was in December while onboard the P&O cruise ship Iona. We had been previously but many years previously and on this occasion had a plan for what we wanted to see and visit….
In particular the old Headquarters Building of the Holland American Line, the museum ship and ex Holland American line’s SS Rotterdam, the Maritime Museum and the Bram Ladage covered market.
Cruise ships berth pretty centrally in spitting distance of the Erasmus Bridge…
The Erasmusbrug (English: “Erasmus Bridge”) crosses the River Nieuwe Maase in the centre of Rotterdam, connecting the north and south parts of this city. The Erasmus Bridge is Rotterdam’s most important landmark and is even part of the city’s official logo….
For those folk who would still wish to head to Amsterdam there are eager taxi drivers waiting within the Rotterdam cruise terminal…
All the places we fancied in Rotterdam were well within walking distance. Indeed, while walking we found a number of other interesting places to pause and investigate.
From the cruise terminal it was a short walk to the historic Holland America Building…
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The former head office of the Holland America Line is an iconic feature of the Wilhelmina Pier in contemporary Rotterdam…
The building itself has now developed into the Hotel New York: a cleverly developed mixture of the old and the new in a rather unique place….
To the right hand side of the Hotel New York is the Rijnhaven Bridge…
…across which, after a short wander along the Sumatraweg with its numerous cafes and restaurants, will bring into view our second destination of the day, the SS Rotterdam…
She was launched by Queen Juliana of the Netherlands in a gala ceremony on 13 September 1958, and was completed the following summer and sailed under the Holland America Line until a gala finale cruise ended her final season on 30 September 1997. She was then sold to the Premier Cruise Line, eventually being purchased and renovated in May 2003 by the Rotterdam Dry Dock Company (RDDC), with the plan to return the ex-Rotterdam to her homeport of Rotterdam where she would serve as a hotel ship. [6]
The ship opened to the public on 15 February 2010 as a combination museum/hotel and school for vocational training.
On 12 June 2013, she was sold to WestCord Hotels, which also owns the Hotel New York located in the former Holland America Line headquarters building in Rotterdam.
There was a short security process to pass prior to boarding…..
Once onboard we basically had the freedom of the public spaces to wander at leisure…
The Reception area…..
The enclosed Promenade Deck…..
The Ambassador Room with dance floor….
…and its adjacent Ambassador Bar…
We made it up on deck….
…and even down to ‘D’ Deck (six below the Promenade Deck) to take in the First & Tourist Class Swimming Pool….
Fascinating……
Our visit to the SS Rotterdam complete we retraced our footsteps back to the Rijnhaven Bridge, past the cruise terminal and on to the Erasmus Bridge….
…where we crossed and dropped onto the opposite bank of the Nieuwe Maase river and proceeded along a short distance as far as the VeerKade and Stichting Veerhaven.
The VeerKade is a semi circle of restored listed mansions and town houses at the centre of which is the Caland Monument….
…which is dedicated to the water management engineer Pieter Caland (1826 – 1902), the inventor of the Nieuwe Waterweg. The construction of this water street allowed the port of Rotterdam to grow strongly at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century.
Adjacent the Veerkade is the Stichting Veerhaven….
Basically now a central marina, though originally conceived as a ferry port in the 18th Century, the marina went through a period of decline until the operation of the port came under the management of the Veerhaven Rotterdam Foundation in 1990…
The Veerhaven is now home to, among other things, seagoing schooners and luggers that, restored and put back into service, keep Rotterdam’s rich maritime history alive…..
Returning to the Erasmus Bridge we now turned left and followed the main road ‘Schiedamsedijk’ past the Mainport Hotel on our right till we arrived at the Rotterdam Maritime Museum….
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One of the largest and most prominent maritime collections in the world illustrating six centuries of Dutch maritime history.
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Apart from the many static maritime associated pieces of interest….
…there is a fine collection of historic commercial work boats….
The museum includes daily demonstrations of maritime craftsmen at work …
Our visit to the Maritime Museum complete we had one further place of possible interest to visit, The Bram ladarge Market Hall…
We chose a route that took us the short length of the Wijnrhaven – water basin – a ten or 12 minute walk with the easily spotted Toonder Monument…
…acting as a guide. The monument is a tribute to the Dutch cartoonist Marten Toonder, who turned 90 on 2 in May 2002. The statue, which is more than six meters high, consists of a baroque clover-shaped bench, on which four well-known figures from the Toonder strip comics feature and is a matter of yards from the Market Hall.
The Bram Ladarge Market Hall is the first oversized indoor market of its kind in the Netherlands and is the largest glass-window cable structure in Europe. It combines both businesses and private apartments with the market hall occupying the space under the buildings fascinating arch…
The horseshoe-shaped arch was designed by architect Winy Maas and is impressive in itself.
However, the truly breathtaking aspect of the structure is its stunning ceiling. Called the ‘Cornucopia,’ the 11,000 square metre space comprises a graphic design created by Arno Coenen and Iris Roskam.
No prizes for guessing we were there a few weeks before Christmas.
The market certainly has an impressive array of food counters and stalls….
Needless to say Dutch cheeses feature very prominently….
Our visit to the Bram Ladarge Market Hall complete we were ready to return to our ship. However, on our walk to the Maritime Museum we had caught a distant glimpse of what appeared an unusual monument of sorts and had noted its position. A slight detour along the oddly named ‘Blaak’ main road – first right outside the Market, soon brought us within site of the Cascade….
This eight-meter-high statue by Atelier Van Lieshout consists of a tower of eighteen oil barrels. They are connected by around twenty human figures that both climb and fall. Together they form a viscous mass, as it were, like oil dripping from the barrels. Van Lieshout mentions victory columns as a source of inspiration but we certainly didn’t get it.
The final piece of interest we observed was as we recrossed the Erasmus bridge. To our left is a fine example of a lift bridge, the Koningshavenbrug De Hef…
De Hef, officially Koningshaven Bridge, is a vertical-lift bridge over the Koningshaven channel. Built in 1927, the bridge was part of the Breda–Rotterdam railway line until it was decommissioned in 1993. Today, it is a Rijksmonument heritage site.
That concludes this review of our recent time in Rotterdam. We thoroughly enjoyed everything we visited.
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