ROTTERDAM - HOLLAND

It was my 4th visit to Holland but since the previous trip was a stag weekend and the two before that was with people who wanted to do little beyond getting stoned in the coffee shops it was safe to say I was going to see more of the country on this trip than the previous 3 put together.

 

I had the been, seen and done it attitude with Amsterdam and with convenient flight times Rotterdam picked itself. Unfortunately it involved yet another long trip to Heathrow airport ........read 7 hours from home to hostel but only 1 hour in the air!!!!!!!

 

I was testing out my latest gadget a pocket GPS which had come through the post the previous day. It wasn’t perfect as it struggled to find a signal around tall buildings but it did at least give a general direction and distance to the pre programed locations that I had put in such as the hostel and tourist attractions. If I had one of these 10 years ago the mind goes into overload about the amount of time and money I would have saved.......

 

Anyway got to the hostel without consulting a map, with not a lot of the evening left I went to the bar and got talking to the people who worked there as well as the other travelers, ended up going to sleep around 4AM........

 

 

I knew the city was not massive on sights so I spent the first full day around Rotterdam and the second exploring the nearby towns. Obviously I was always going to compare it to Amsterdam, not as scenic but also not as touristy or expensive. Normally I would do a walking tour but this time chose to do it on my own steam. The above was of the cube houses.

 

 

The Euromast was another obvious choice to visit with great views from the top. 

 I took this clip from the top where you can sit inside a revolving room that goes to the very top.

The rest of the day was a bit uneventful as I had been on a stag weekend in Bristol the previous week, gone straight back to work on 12 hour shifts then gone straight to Rotterdam, needless to say it caught up with me a bit. Not many people in the hostel bar at night and I was asleep before midnight. Had a bit of a dispute with another room member who had crashed out on my bed!!!

 

 

Straight up straight to the train station and explore Holland, first stop was the small town of Delft which was about a stereotypically dutch as you can get. Like my previous visits to Germany I knew it would have been a lot better visiting in the summer.

 

Next was The Hague which I spent a couple of hours walking around including an interesting local market. Due to time constraints I had to choose between the coast and Utrecht.

 

In the end I took the tram ride to Scheveningen which had a very English feel about the place. The smell and appearance of the grim north sea was familiar so was the horrible cold wind!!!!.

I walked round took a few pictures, had a hot drink and headed back to Rotterdam.

The final night was a bit uneventful but much better than the second. I would have liked to have gone out and sampled a bit of nightlife but it just didn’t happen this time.

 

The final morning someone stolen a bike outside the hostel while everyone was watching. Had a brief walk round then it was off home.

Overall it wasn’t the best weekend away I had but then again since the previous trips were Munich and Lisbon it was going to be a hard act to follow.