Kind of a weird thing to lead with in an article apparently about cruising along the Nieuwe Maas canal out of Rotterdam, isn’t it?

Well, maybe. But I am known for being a little wordy in my cruise travelogues and sometimes I like to go off on a little tangent. In this case I’m trying to prepare the scene for the sort of feeling I got when Island Princess started to sail away from the Dutch city after sunset and we started to pass an awful lot of businesses and apartments with lights and an apparent aversion to curtains.

So, definitely not some kind of perverted Peeping Tom thing going on, then?

Absolutely not. Wink.

So, for the most part there’s not a lot else to say here. These photos of Rotterdam were taken from our cabin balcony on Island Princess as we made our way quietly along the canal that leads to the North Sea. It was fairly cold now that not even any radiation from the sun could find its way through the clouds to warm our bones, and our ship’s speed was understandably slow because locals don’t like huge bow waves washing against their buildings and moored boats, etc. As a result I kept popping out, shooting off a few pictures, then returning to the room to warm up again, only venturing back outside when some new arrangement of lights in buildings seemed interesting enough to warrant it.

A dome sat atop pillars caught our attention. With the Euromast behind it we could tell that the area behind and to the right was where we’d walked around earlier in the day, Het Park, so our initial thought was that this was something related to the park. Instead it’s one of the ventilation towers at the northern end of the Maastunnel, the oldest tunnel in the Netherlands. It was opened in 1942 to alleviate increasing traffic problems on bridges over the canal areas with the decision to build a tunnel rather than bridge because of the height needed to accommodate increasingly large ships that sailed down and made the seaport so profitable.

This part of the Dutch landscape we were now passing was technically Schiedam, a city just to the west of Rotterdam. In the photos below you should be able to see a distillery and a large windmill. That is the Nolet Mill, and at forty two and a half metres in height (fifty five if you get to the top of the sails) it is the tallest mill in the world. However, despite its appearance and resemblance to other historic mills in this part of the Netherlands traditionally used for grinding ingredients for distillery processes, Nolet Mill is a modern construction dating to just 2005 and designed as a show piece for visitors to the nearby distillery as well as being used to generate electricity.

Another building reaching forty two and half metres in height and also partly just to show off was the eye-catching De Bolder tower. This was built for a company called Mammoet who specialise in heavy lifting, so the entire two and a half thousand tons building was constructed elsewhere, transported by boat over the course of three days to this position, then lifted into place and connected up.

We eventually ran out of bits of the Netherlands to see as we reached the end of the Nieuwe Maas canal.

To finish off this post, some photos of dinner in the evening aboard the cruise ship. I assure you that there would have been drinking too but sometimes I just forget to take photos of them.

There’s just one more port of call to cover from this Island Princess cruise travelogue series and that will be fairly familiar to regular cruisers out of Southampton as an awful lot of cruises hit Zeebrugge, Belgium at some point or another. Most people will venture into some of the historic canal cities inland of Bruges or Ghent – and we’ve done that before too – but there’s also a city just along the coastline which we’d never visited before, so this time we decided to do just that and explore Blankenberge.

So, this post will mostly just contain photos taken on the walk from the historic house we’d just been to back to the cruise port where Island Princess would be waiting for us to take the weight off our feet. It might give you a little idea about the sort of things you can typically see in Europe’s largest seaport. The walking route we took was the simplest available, heading east along Westblaak then south down Schiedamsedijk to the Erasmus Bridge.

We’d already seen a fair bit of modern art in the parks we’d explored earlier in the day in Rotterdam but it turned out that there was no shortage of it along the main roads in the city either. Initially, most of the public artworks were sculptural, large, and colourful.

Of course, with this being the Netherlands the other thing that it was impossible not to notice was the amount of bikes everywhere. We certainly didn’t see quite as many as when we’d visited Amsterdam on a few occasions before but then again these were busier, more main streets in Rotterdam we were walking along, so cars had more of a presence.

As we turned to head south we noticed more street art painted on walls and shutters and fewer sculptures. Not the best examples of the art form, but always appreciated.

The Low Light of the Hook of Holland is the long name for the relatively small lighthouse that originally stood at the Hook of Holland before an expanding coastline pushed it too far back from the sea to be effective. The lighthouse was built in 1899 and has been standing in its present position beside the Maritime Museum since 1990.

A building on the corner near the bridge we’d be soon crossing caught my eye. I can just imagine the architect holding open a page of designs.

“And these are the types of windows we can do.”

“I like them. Yes, they’ll be great.”

“Which ones?”

“All of them, thanks.”

The structure in the photo below is the national monument to the Dutch merchant navy personnel who died in service while aiding the allies in wartime.

This brought us to the northern side of the Nieuwe Maas canal where we immediately spotted our lovely cruise ship, Island Princess, at the port, waiting for us with the promise of rest and a drinks package that longed for us to continue using it.

Oddly, neither of us could remember walking past a luminous, lime green rhinoceros when we’d left the ship earlier in the day but we couldn’t help but notice one on the approach to the terminal.

As we weren’t completely sure whether my wife’s walking woes would have an impact on the next and last port on this cruise, and as we’d been there a few times before so it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world to stay aboard, we decided to empty our pockets of all the Euros we had on us in Rotterdam’s cruise terminal. There were a few options for souvenirs but we ended up getting several packs of Stroopwafel, knowing it would be easy to distribute these to family members as something we’d brought back to them even if there wasn’t much thought in it.

We spent the remainder of our time docked alongside in Rotterdam on the ship, enjoying sitting down, drinking, reading, backing up photos, watching water taxis and water buses pass by our balcony, and lights in the city start to switch on as the evening started to draw in.

In the next post in this 2022 Island Princess cruise travelogue series we’ll take a look at Rotterdam from the balcony of Island Princess as we sail away down the Nieuwe Maas canal at night ahead of a short overnight cruise to our final port of call in Belgium.

Now, my wife definitely humoured me on this decision, but to be fair it had been her who’d wanted to see the glass blowing when we’d been at our previous port stop in Norway so I was owed. “You want to see an historic house, but historic like the way Americans think things are historic, meaning our own house is older, right?”

We headed in a broadly northerly direction from Het Park which took us through another park called Museum Park. You will be unsurprised to hear, hopefully, that this was a park in an area with a few museums dotted around it, particularly some associated with modern art, and there were a few pieces of artwork visible. On another day we might have ventured into those museums – and, indeed, that had been part of the vague plan we’d had for our day visiting Rotterdam because we’ve got a fondness for modern art – but we’d done a fair bit of walking already on this cruise as a whole and even on this day in this Dutch city, and I was keenly aware that my wife’s ankle might not appreciate too much strain.

Museum Park is part of the Boijmans Van Beuningen museum complex. A granite monument at the southern end of a lake was dedicated to G.J. de Jongh, director of Municipal Works of Rotterdam between 1879 and 1910.

Two buildings facing one another across the park, both part of the Boijmans Van Beuningen museum, couldn’t have looked more different architecturally. Definitely somewhere we need to come back to Rotterdam and have a look at some day.

This brought us to Huis Sonneveld.

From the outside it was clear to see that Huis Sonneveld came from the same sort of period of design that gave rise to Art Deco, but this 1933 house actually belongs to a style of architecture known as Dutch Functionalism. Functionalism, as the name suggests, is based on the idea that design should be for the purpose. In this way the house can be seen to be bridging the gap between Art Deco and Modernism.

Some of the principles of the functionalist design ethos would be clear to see when we walked through the rooms inside Huis Sonneveld: very little ornamentation, matching furniture in different rooms, an emphasis on health and hygiene with large windows or access to the main hallway or exterior spaces from most rooms, an abundance of well-equipped bathrooms. Pillared, floating elevations and a flat roof space for external use along with free-flowing designs and non-load-bearing exterior walls derived from the architectural designs of Le Corbusier who would be instrumental in the later modernist and brutalist styles.

We entered Huis Sonneveld, paid our money, put on our protective slippers over our shoes, grabbed an audio guide, and started to explore the inside of the house. Some original pieces and many reproductions of how Huis Sonneveld would have looked greeted us in every room, and the audio guide was absolutely fantastic. If you’re visiting this historic building then you really should make the effort to listen to every bit of information on the guide. We weren’t the only people visiting the building and it was fascinating to see us all wander around, stand still, listen to our guides, take photos, then wander off, all in a respectful silence.

That free-flowing design of the house that was helped by the steel skeleton could be clearly seen in the living room and in the shape of the stairwell that connected all the floors.

One thing we noticed was that every bed in every bedroom had a built-in radio and intercom system. This was part of the influence from America that helped Sonneveld direct the architects. In a similar way the house had an elevator, dumb waiter system, all the latest modern equipment, and luxury features that he’d experienced when living in and travelling around the United States, and when sailing on ocean liners to and from there.

From the top of Huis Sonneveld we could see back the way we’d come to the tops of the museums around the park. This space on the roof had an adjustable wind shield to allow it to be used comfortably. Our audio guides explained that the building had been used to house refugees during World War II and that many used to like to come to the roof and enjoy the fresh air.

We headed into the lower parts of the house where there was a kitchen that was a later change to the original design, replacing an earlier layout with new modular equipment from the late 1930s. This was another area that implemented functionalist designs with an integrated ventilation system for health and comfort.

Every room had a definite function and a definite character. Perhaps there was something a little too sterile about some of it although that comes from the fact that Huis Sonneveld is a museum house, reflecting a snapshot of how the family might have had all the rooms set up based on knowledge of furniture purchased and accounts from members of the family in later decades. Clearly, there was no sense that anyone truly lived in it now, but that gave it a mesmerising feel all of its own. Again, the audio guides helped a lot, adding anecdotes from the family about life growing up in the house.

I mentioned that my wife had tolerated my desire to visit Huis Sonneveld as it wouldn’t have been something she’d have picked but as we stepped out she told me, without any prompting in case you were wondering, that it had been a fantastic experience and that she was so glad she’d seen it. It wasn’t anything that we’d heard or seen any other cruise bloggers visit, which always appeals to us anyway, and it might initially feel like it only looks interesting to those who like modern architecture and design so that could put some people off. It shouldn’t, though. Huis Sonneveld isn’t huge – even listening to the audio guides in every room it only took us about forty five minutes to complete our tour of the inside of the house – so there’s no reason not to look around if you just want to do something a little different when visiting Rotterdam.

In the next post in this cruise travelogue series we’ll do a little bit more gentle walking in Rotterdam on a different route back to Island Princess at the cruise port.

After our arrival at the cruise terminal aboard Island Princess we’d walked over the Erasmus Bridge to Veerhaven and it was just a short stroll from there before we found ourselves looking around Het Park. The Dutch don’t capitalise the aitch at the start of Het Park but I’m not Dutch, so I will.

There’s not a huge amount to say about the park other than it was very pleasant and if you like parks and gardens then you’d probably like this one. There were some interesting-looking birds for the ornithologists to ooh and aah over, there were lovely little lakes through the green area for fans of water to ooh and aah over, and there were even some sculptures for art lovers to ooh and aah over. If nothing else, and if you’ve been exploring Rotterdam prior to this, then it makes for a great break from the city skyline and roads, trams, cars, and bikes you’ve probably seen more than enough of.

Our walk through Het Park at first more-or-less took us in whichever direction we could see something of interest in and that’s why sculptures feature prominently. The first we happened upon was a statue of Hendrik Tollens, a poet whose work was used as the country’s national anthem until 1932.

More interesting to us were the modern art pieces. The memorial to the Dutch composer Anton Verhey was nice enough but it was eclipsed by the enormous public artwork by Madeleine Berkhemer called Lost Pearls made up of an open oyster shell and a pearl necklace large enough for children to play on.

We weaved a path this way and that through the park, occasionally stopping to admire rabbits or herons or the view of the Euromast, but our general direction eventually turned northwards and out of Het Park towards the next place we wanted to see.

Just before we left the park area we wandered through the small formal gardens set out in front of Dudok, a restaurant there with quite attractive views for lunch if the weather were slightly better than we were being treated to.

In the next post covering what we got up to in Rotterdam for the day we’ll look around and be wowed by a fabulous piece of modernist home design when we visit Huis Sonneveld.

Princess offered excursions to Amsterdam for those who wanted to see what they were missing there but we had no intention of taking advantage of that. And, of course, Princess laid on entertainment of varying degrees for those intent on staying on board Island Princess. If you were thinking of cruising to Rotterdam aboard a Princess Cruises ship but staying aboard when there, then here’s the sort of activities you could enjoy instead of the city.

We had overcast weather conditions for our visit to Rotterdam. From our balcony on the ship docked at the cruise terminal we could see across the Nieuwe Maas shipping canal to the southern part of the central area of the city.

To the left, just peeking out from behind a tower block, was the Euromast which is a popular destination for some tourists. We wouldn’t be visiting it on this day in Rotterdam but we would be heading in that general direction during the day.

To the right we could see the Erasmus Bridge (Erasmusbrug) which we’d need to cross in order to reach central Rotterdam. The bridge took ten years to complete, opening to the public in 1996, and it’s known locally as “The Swan” (although in Dutch, obviously). The initial design needed tweaking to include additional back stay strengthening on its single pylon support as engineering tests concluded it would not adequately support the weight when trucks rolled over it. After it opened additional changes were made to add stronger shock absorbers as the bridge swayed too much when the wind hit it side-on.

I’ve said before that we can be contrarians when we travel and Rotterdam is a good example of how this can manifest itself. Take a look at anyone else – particularly cruise bloggers – who visits Rotterdam and posts some content on social media or their own site and you will see Cube Houses and the Markthal. Maybe the Euromast occasionally. Perhaps the SS Rotterdam to break the things up. But always the Cube Houses. Always the Markthal. Take a look at where people who make repeat trips to Rotterdam go and you’ll see them hit the Markthal again. And again.

We decided that we would go elsewhere mainly to be different, and in the first part of this series of accounts of our day visiting Rotterdam I’ll cover a few of the sights as we headed to the first of those places. Don’t get me wrong, though: the Cube Houses do appeal to us and a later visit to this city will no doubt include them, but we felt that we wanted to experience a sense of finding something new and not simply walking in the footsteps of everyone who’d come before us.

Out of the cruise terminal we went, and headed across the Erasmus Bridge, braving the quite cold wind whistling down the canal and across us. We had some early chances to admire some of the architecture of Rotterdam as we walked. What I really liked was that architects and designers seem to have been given more-or-less free rein to throw up whatever they like. It means imaginations can run wild and there’s less of that conformity that can sometimes sterilise a place.

Reaching the far side of the Nieuwe Maas canal we took a left towards a large park we could see on the map. This brought us first, though, to a small area called Veerhaven with a nice view of boats and barges docked alongside the water as well as five busts of men.

The men sculpted in bronze were significant figures in Rotterdam’s shipping quarter history.

• Antony van Hoboken (1756-1852) – Worked himself up from warehouse operator to owning the largest sailing fleet in the Netherlands.
• D.G. Van Beuningen (1877-1955) – Competed with British exporters of coal by importing from Germany using the canal system, leading to many changes in mechanical handling of transported goods.
• Elie van Rijckevorsel (1845-1928) – Coming from a wealthy family he decided not to follow in the family’s business endeavours and embraced many scientific fields, collecting specimens of glassware, porcelain, and rock from Indonesia and Brazil.
• Marten Mees (1828-1917) – A steady investment banker who was involved in setting up public housing among other deeds considered beneficial to the people of Rotterdam.
• Louis Jamin (1881-1953) – A son of Cornelis Jamin who’d founded sweet stores in the Netherlands that still bear his name, Louis oversaw the expansion from fifty outlets to well over five hundred by his death.

After a short check of the map to make absolutely sure we were heading in the right direction we carried on.

In the next post in this cruise travelogue series we’ll wander through Het Park in Rotterdam.