Starting for home: Rotterdam-Gouda-Amsterdam
This is blog post #29 from our tour of northern Europe. We would take a tour/shuttle to Amsterdam with a 2-hour stop at Gouda, then fly to Iceland the next day, and on the third day, fly Reykjavik-Vancouver and Vancouver-Whitehorse.
When I opened the curtains of our cabin on the cruise ship Nieuw Statendam the morning of Sunday, July 27th, this was my view. Rotterdam. Wow, what a shock after 28 days out in the boonies! 😀
The view up the Maas from our docked position.
The fueling boat was beside us within minutes of us docking, getting our ship ready to head north again this afternoon, to England, Ireland, and Scotland for 14 days this time.
Our luggage had been put in the hall being going to bed last night, and our Club Orange upgrade allowed us to disembark whenever we wanted. Cathy had arranged pickup for our tour/shuttle for 09:00, making a leisurely breakfast in our quiet Club Orange dining room possible. Avoid the crowds, avoid the stress – oooooooommmm 🙂
We had really enjoyed our brief time in Rotterdam a month before, and next time, will stay for a few days.
Finding our luggage was very simple and quick so we had some time to kill. We found a bench in a quiet plaza on a side street, and walked over to our meeting point at 09:00 approached.
It’s less than 30 km from the Rotterdam dock to Gouda. Once we got to Gouda, we decided to get dropped off at the Museumhaven (heritage harbour). We’d call him in a couple of hours and let him know where to pick us up.
My lesson of the morning about Gouda from our shuttle driver – it’s not pronounced “Gooda”, but a gutteral “Khowda” (a sound I’m not able to reproduce). A woman at the visitor centre in Gouda verified that 🙂 Hear it on a short Youtube video here.
The Museumhaven is a brilliant concept. It allows the owners of historic boats to moor then, and there is even a workshop to help in maintaining the boats. I don’t know how many boats are there, but I would guess about 30. This was a wonderful place to start exploring!
We were checking out the Mallegatsluis, one of the manned historical locks connecting the waterways of the Hollandse IJssel with the Gouwe, when a flotilla of recreational boaters came up through the heritage harbour and used it! What a bonus to see the whole operation.
I could have spent the whole two hours at the Museumhaven, but there was lots more to see in Gouda.
The pathway along the waterway deviates in places, allowing for a broader look at the neighbourhood. Here’s an efficient space – an efficient anti-trespassing fence, and an efficient use of space to get vertical.
They have their own version of our Little Free Libraries – we saw two of these, named “Vestbieb” and “Straatbieb”. “Straatbieb” translates as Street Library.
Now that’s a cool streetscape! This windmill is a private residence now.
Back to the old boats 🙂
The focus of the Museumhaven is commercial boats, and the variety of boats that have been converted to unique residences is fascinating.
A bicycle is often a nice addition to a street scene. In many places you would have to wait a long time for one to come along, but not in Gouda (or Amsterdam!).
We went into one more church before leaving Europe. As usual, we spent quite a while here marvelling at both the artistry and the passion it takes to create a building like this.
In the alley behind the church. Strange, but a wonderful photo op.
Although I was carrying both Canon cameras as usual, I used the big 7D for all my shots in Gouda except the church interiors above where I needed the wider Powershot lens.
Registered heritage buildings are marked with this small plaque beside the door. There are quite a few of them, and many other buildings just as old that just aren’t registered.
I think this was my favourite street in Gouda. It evoked a feeling I don’t even have words for.
This imposing entrance to a well-hidden estate on that street is titled “Fondatie van Hendrick en Helena Jans ‘t Hart” and dated 1657.
I think the word “whimsical” describes this perfectly. Every photographer passing by thanks you 🙂
Now we’re in “downtown” Gouda, where many of the streetscapes are very different than what we’d seen up to that point.
Wow, that’s quite a building! It takes a person with a unique personality to have a structure like that built – Mad King Ludwig and his Neuschwanstein in Bavaria comes to mind 🙂 The castle used to have a moat, and now serves as the city hall.
Many of the details on the Disneyland castle, which was built between 1448 and 1450 despite the date 1603 seen here, are wonderful.
That is such a violation of everything that includes sensitivity to beauty and/or history.
The police.
The Waag cheese weighing house on the left, the Hotel de Zalm on the right. The Waag was built in 1667, the hotel in 1551!
The spectacular sculpture on the upper storey of the museum building shows the cheese market.
We were sure tempted, but it would just complicate things – unless we ate it all today 🙂
We found a convenient spot for our driver to pick us up and were soon on our way to our hotel in downtown Amsterdam. Our poor driver may never accept another charter to downtown Amsterdam – the traffic and clogged streets totally stressed him out – it’s a very different place than Rotterdam.
We knew we couldn’t check in yet, so dropped our bags and backpacks and went for a long walk. There’s certainly lots of great walking routes.
An interesting way to add square footage to upper floors is to lean the building out over the street – we saw quite a few of them.
The walk included a nice lunch nearby.
At 3:00 we went back to our hotel. The NH Hotel City Centre doesn’t look like much outside but it’s very nice inside – nothing fancy but modern and spotlessly clean.
Our room, 017, was also very nice and overlooked the canal (they may all overlook one of the canals). One weird thing that neither of us liked – the toilet is in a tiny closet of a room by itself.
Afternoon coffee in our room. Yes, the water is very good, right from the tap 🙂
The restaurant in the hotel doesn’t serve dinner, so another walk was necessary to find a place. That turned out to be difficult – either no table was available or it had a noise level beyond what I can deal with. We eventually found De Brabantse Aap (I don’t know – something about a monkey), and had beers and burgers there. I don’t even know what a Dutch meal would be – you can only have so many stroopwafel! 😀 The meal was very good – and hey, the fries came with mayo 🙂
We went by a huge flower market, but bulbs aren’t nearly as interesting as actual flowers.
After hearing I think one siren over the past 28 days, the city is quite a shock.
Teeny cars of many species are quite common, and seem like a very good idea.
The next morning, we had breakfast at the hotel restaurant. We were both very surprised by the selection available – not an American-style buffet, but cold and hot, beyond most European continental breakfasts. It was a very good start to the day.
Back at our room, we got packed, I took two more photos from our room, we checked out, and went out to the street to wait for our Uber to the airport.
To get good connections and not burn ourselves out, we would only fly to Reykjavik/Keflavik the first day, and overnight there.
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