Saturday 30th August…
Lucky Rotterdam is so flat because today we got a map from the Tourist Info that took you on a walking tour around town. So that filled in the time between about 1pm and 7.30pm. In the morning we slept in, availed ourselves of the hotel breakfast, and generally kicked around checking email, working out train timetables to get up the beach at Noordwijk (from which it is but a short train trip to Amsterdam), from Noordwijk back to Rotterdam and from Rotterdam over to Karlsruhe (Germany).
The weather is absolutely perfect (warm sunshine all day until after 8.00pm, when a slow darkening begins).
The tour took us through the main shopping arcade, and the war memorial and town hall, then through more shops where the guy (not much older than 18) supervising the poffertje cooking plate shouted ‘picture 1 euro’ at Alice when she went for the obligatory snap, although luckily we were intending to buy some of their miniature pancakes anyway, and while we waited the guy explained we should go the beach at Scheveningen NOT Noordwijk which is no good, then to the markets, to the Willemsbrug (bridge) across the old port and another war memorial to the park ‘Het Park’ – which means ‘The Park’ – and the Euromast tower, then back through town past the exhibition of the World Press Photo competition (which we were sorely tempted by but it was 7 euro each), then chips with mayo in the museumpark (no, not a typo for helpful readers at home), and the back to our hotel where there was sadly no football whatsoever on TV.
It was a great fun day of wandering, in lovely weather, and didn’t feel like that much walking. Plus, before we started walking around we went and booked some more train tickets, and also at the markets I found 5 large sunflowers for 2€, and bags of fresh pineapple for 2€ while Alice was off wandering taking photos.
So she got huge sunflowers, and we got to go sit on a bench in the sun and eat our pineapple. Yes, we like Rotterdam.
Greg
