I've only passed through Rotterdam once before, in 1975. Rotterdam is the 2nd largest Dutch city after Amsterdam. Located in the province of South Holland at the mouth of the Nieuwe Maas channel leading into the Rhine-Meuse-Scheldt delta at the North Sea. The Rhine, Meuse and Scheldt give waterway access into the heart of Western Europe, including the highly industrialized Ruhr.
We docked right by the Erasmus bridge.
I went to the main market, this has apartments above it, these look down into the market. Opposite are the cube houses. And a bicycle park.
The doors of St Lawrence church, The Laurenskerk -
I wanted to get out to the World Heritage site of Kinderdijk. I'd been told about water bus 202, but found that doesn’t run in the winter, but I could get water bus 20 to Alblasserdam and then walk. This runs every half hour.
The 11 km journey cost €4. From Alblasserdam I decided to walk to Kinderdijk, rather than looking for a bus. I walked fast and it took about 45 min to get to the main dyke. I had to cross many waterways and a lot of houses had water at the end of their gardens -
There are 19 windmills and a museum forming the WH site. The mills were built around 1740. They were used to to pump excess water into a reservoir until the river level had receded and could take more water. Since 1927 a diesel pumping station does this job. The windmills were last used during the second World War, when the mechanical pumps could not be used due to fuel shortages.
10 of the 19 windmills
Going back to Rotterdam, I saw some interesting architecture along the river -
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See the next blog on my Amazon cruise - Porto, Portugal.
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