Trip report: Rotterdam and excursions, October 2025
May 17th, 2026 | 03:08 PM
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Trip report: Rotterdam and excursions, October 2025
Better late than never, this trip report precedes the Naples/Mezzogiorno report. We chose Rotterdam on the recommendation of a cousin by marriage who bicycled from Berlin to Rotterdam and praised Rotterdam for its contemporary architecture.
To start, here’s a map of Rotterdam which covers the area that we saw.
It’s all walkable, and I say this as being 3 years shy of a Lincolnesque age. However we did use public transportation to get to and from the central train station when carrying our luggage and when the destination was our goal—such as taking the train to Delft. In addition, we took public transportation to get to the Euromast-- and still had to walk a distance--because the geographical distances were unclear and we wanted to get there as early as possible to beat the crowds and the potential need of a reservation. But after having viewed the city from the top, it was clear that getting back to the center involved a longish but pleasant stroll through a park.
https://flic.kr/p/2rJUnia
The Euromast (red star 4 on the map) is worth it just like the Eiffel tower in Paris or the Empire State building in NYC and has an outdoor observation deck at the top of the first elevator ride. The ride to the very top of the mast (extra charge) is something else. You are strapped to your seat and it is like riding up in a void. The windows are tinted, so it is disappointing in terms of taking photographs. Mine were all taken from the observation deck.
We stayed at the Motto By Hilton Rotterdam Blaak and if you Google it, it will pride itself in the king size bed squeezed into a small room. They did all sorts of clever things to make the room attractive, such as paint black lines to delineate a 4 poster bed (it’s the first picture on the hotel’s room pictures). But the fact remains that the person sleeping on the window side of the bed will have to crawl into bed starting from the end of the bed or crab walk on the window side because there is no hip space between the bed and the wall. It also means that there is no night stand there, and the shelf above the head board is so high that an alarm clock rings annoyingly more than is necessary. But the cost was acceptable ($1052 for 9 nights); the front desk is friendly and helpful. The hotel is a repurposed bank where the front desk has a little corner of the lobby and the rest is run by a concessionaire, including a large circular bar. Standard breakfast can be added to your hotel bill but not a do it yourself, i.e. a coffee and a roll which must be paid separately, The hotel is also home to a fish restaurant. Fish and seafood are laid out on ice, you choose your fish like in a fish shop which is priced per kilo, and it will come prepared with two vegetables. By SF prices it is a reasonably priced restaurant but after two evening meal there it is clear that the preparation tends to be similar for any of the food offered (exception of shell fish) and that the vegetable sides are uninteresting. It’s worth a single visit.
The hotel is well located near a local train station, the cathedral, the Market Hall, the cube houses (area on the map with red stars 17, 1 and 8). This was a heavily bombed section of Rotterdam so that it contains a lot of modern architecture, some of it replacements for badly built post W.W.II buildings. On the square between the cathedral and the Market Hall a large market takes place on Saturdays. Oysters for breakfast https://flic.kr/p/2rJUB7Z
The Market Hall is a food hall composed mainly of all kinds of restaurants offering traditional Dutch food (good herring) to an array of international food restaurants. It also has two supermarkets, one oriented toward Western tastes and the other toward Asian groceries, an underground parking and apartments in the shell of the Hall.
https://flic.kr/p/2rJNuZs
The cube apartments which are standing on point
https://flic.kr/p/2rJUm7T
are worth a visit but are totally impractical except for couples without children, singles, and without physical ailments that would make a corkscrew staircase a chore to climb.
From the Market Hall it is an easy walk to what I assume was the main harbor pre W.W.II. The area has been completely rebuilt although one building stands by itself as a reminder of what the area had been? If a ruin, it was one of the few reconstructed buildings,
https://flic.kr/p/2rJT4wT
It houses a fish restaurant that had very good mussels—perfect as a lunch stop.
Walking along the canal leads to the maritime museum. I was not particularly impressed by the exhibits in the museum building, but the boats on the canal part of the museum are interesting. They represent the working canal boats of the 20th century when each boat had a work function but also housed the family in charge of the boat; living space was very limited.
Continuing along the canal leads to the foot of the Erasmus bridge (red star 3) where one can catch a tour of the enormous modern port or the water bus that takes you to the Kinderdijk area. We did both on separate days.
We took the shorter harbor tour. The harbor was fairly quiet although there was a dredger keeping the channels open by collecting sand. These boats are apparently in constant operation.
Kinderdijk is a short water bus ride from Rotterdam. It consists of a dozen or so watermills whose sole purpose is to drain the water from the polders. The visitor arrives on the modern side of the operation, where the steam driven pumps can be seen in the pump house, and the modern water screw that now performs this function. The historical mills are from the 18th century with the exception of one 17th century mill.
Most are leased as dwelling units, but a couple are open as museums with attendants who can explain and demonstrate how the system worked. There is a food concessionaire near the entrance, and the food is not fabulous. On a nice day picnic items purchased before leaving Rotterdam would be more satisfying.
We spent the good part of a day in Delft. We visited two museums, both of which are essentially house museums, House Of Meerten was originally planned as a museum of the owner’s collections. But these were eventually distributed to other museums, and only the mansion itself remains. The caretakers were one of the few people in the tourist trade whose English was weak. But they insisted that we have tea in the room overlooking the garden, furnished with period furniture, i.e. late 19th century.
https://flic.kr/p/2rGQs2w
We also visited the Museum Paul Tétar van Elven, which was much more interesting, in part because we were snared by one of the volunteers who gave us a private tour of the house, explaining that the artist was a run-of-the-mill artist who mainly copied old Masters for clients and who made his money in railroad investment in Russia among other places. The house is full of paintings, some by him and some by others,
none particularly outstanding. The house is fully furnished and with the guide providing details, it gave a better understanding of middle class life of that time, also straddling the 19th and 20th centuries.
https://flic.kr/p/2rGWDe2
We had bought separate tickets for the two museums; a combination ticket would have been cheaper.
Other than that, we strolled through the very attractive town which would be less appealing in inclement weather.
https://flic.kr/p/2rGVYuB
Our third destination outside Rotterdam was The Hague. Our goal was the Mauritshuis, the Kunstmuseum The Hague, and the Escher in the Palace. This last one is near the Mauritshuis and is small enough to be an add-on. One goes to the Mauritshuis for the Dutch masters exhibited in a period palace. The Kunstmuseum is an Art Deco building, clearly influenced by Frank Lloyd Wright’s prairie style.
https://flic.kr/p/2rGXEvw
The impression is that most of the art in that museum dates from the inter-war period.
https://flic.kr/p/2rGXFcX
But it also has period rooms going back to the 17th century, and it had a special exhibit on desserts (mainly cakes) which had to have this painting:
https://flic.kr/p/2rGWCoA
Back to Rotterdam. All tourist information touts the Depot of Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen (red star 2) as an alternative to the museum itself because it is closed for renovation. It sounds appealing but is really disappointing. The core of the tower consists of staircases and elevators which give the feeling of an Escher painting.
https://flic.kr/p/2rJU3fE
The artworks are preserved in storage spaces that are on the outside. Entrance to the storage room is tightly controlled by number of visitors in a group and the number of groups allowed in any given section is very limited (perhaps as little as four per day?). One cannot wander freely in the sections, and the tour basically explains conservation practices but little about what we are seeing beyond its physical elements.
On the other hand we had a wonderful meal at the top of the tower with a view of the hanging forest, Reservations are a must, entry is after closure of the Depot to the general public. Judging by some of the clientele, it is a celebratory locale.
https://flic.kr/p/2rJT7wv
Near the museum there are a series of villas that probably were built around the same period of time, the inter-war period. One at least can be visited, and be seen as a fully furnished villa, including kitchen and bathrooms. It’s the Sonneveld House (number 51 on the map), definitely worth a visit. An audio guide is provided containing excellent narration.
https://nieuweinstituut.nl/projects/huis-sonneveld
One of the villas was designed by Rietveld, but it was closed or perhaps is never open to the public.
Here are the full albums related to this trip:
https://flic.kr/s/aHBqjCCLEt
https://flic.kr/s/aHBqjCBA36
To start, here’s a map of Rotterdam which covers the area that we saw.
It’s all walkable, and I say this as being 3 years shy of a Lincolnesque age. However we did use public transportation to get to and from the central train station when carrying our luggage and when the destination was our goal—such as taking the train to Delft. In addition, we took public transportation to get to the Euromast-- and still had to walk a distance--because the geographical distances were unclear and we wanted to get there as early as possible to beat the crowds and the potential need of a reservation. But after having viewed the city from the top, it was clear that getting back to the center involved a longish but pleasant stroll through a park.
https://flic.kr/p/2rJUnia
The Euromast (red star 4 on the map) is worth it just like the Eiffel tower in Paris or the Empire State building in NYC and has an outdoor observation deck at the top of the first elevator ride. The ride to the very top of the mast (extra charge) is something else. You are strapped to your seat and it is like riding up in a void. The windows are tinted, so it is disappointing in terms of taking photographs. Mine were all taken from the observation deck.
We stayed at the Motto By Hilton Rotterdam Blaak and if you Google it, it will pride itself in the king size bed squeezed into a small room. They did all sorts of clever things to make the room attractive, such as paint black lines to delineate a 4 poster bed (it’s the first picture on the hotel’s room pictures). But the fact remains that the person sleeping on the window side of the bed will have to crawl into bed starting from the end of the bed or crab walk on the window side because there is no hip space between the bed and the wall. It also means that there is no night stand there, and the shelf above the head board is so high that an alarm clock rings annoyingly more than is necessary. But the cost was acceptable ($1052 for 9 nights); the front desk is friendly and helpful. The hotel is a repurposed bank where the front desk has a little corner of the lobby and the rest is run by a concessionaire, including a large circular bar. Standard breakfast can be added to your hotel bill but not a do it yourself, i.e. a coffee and a roll which must be paid separately, The hotel is also home to a fish restaurant. Fish and seafood are laid out on ice, you choose your fish like in a fish shop which is priced per kilo, and it will come prepared with two vegetables. By SF prices it is a reasonably priced restaurant but after two evening meal there it is clear that the preparation tends to be similar for any of the food offered (exception of shell fish) and that the vegetable sides are uninteresting. It’s worth a single visit.
The hotel is well located near a local train station, the cathedral, the Market Hall, the cube houses (area on the map with red stars 17, 1 and 8). This was a heavily bombed section of Rotterdam so that it contains a lot of modern architecture, some of it replacements for badly built post W.W.II buildings. On the square between the cathedral and the Market Hall a large market takes place on Saturdays. Oysters for breakfast https://flic.kr/p/2rJUB7Z
The Market Hall is a food hall composed mainly of all kinds of restaurants offering traditional Dutch food (good herring) to an array of international food restaurants. It also has two supermarkets, one oriented toward Western tastes and the other toward Asian groceries, an underground parking and apartments in the shell of the Hall.
https://flic.kr/p/2rJNuZs
The cube apartments which are standing on point
https://flic.kr/p/2rJUm7T
are worth a visit but are totally impractical except for couples without children, singles, and without physical ailments that would make a corkscrew staircase a chore to climb.
From the Market Hall it is an easy walk to what I assume was the main harbor pre W.W.II. The area has been completely rebuilt although one building stands by itself as a reminder of what the area had been? If a ruin, it was one of the few reconstructed buildings,
https://flic.kr/p/2rJT4wT
It houses a fish restaurant that had very good mussels—perfect as a lunch stop.
Walking along the canal leads to the maritime museum. I was not particularly impressed by the exhibits in the museum building, but the boats on the canal part of the museum are interesting. They represent the working canal boats of the 20th century when each boat had a work function but also housed the family in charge of the boat; living space was very limited.
Continuing along the canal leads to the foot of the Erasmus bridge (red star 3) where one can catch a tour of the enormous modern port or the water bus that takes you to the Kinderdijk area. We did both on separate days.
We took the shorter harbor tour. The harbor was fairly quiet although there was a dredger keeping the channels open by collecting sand. These boats are apparently in constant operation.
Kinderdijk is a short water bus ride from Rotterdam. It consists of a dozen or so watermills whose sole purpose is to drain the water from the polders. The visitor arrives on the modern side of the operation, where the steam driven pumps can be seen in the pump house, and the modern water screw that now performs this function. The historical mills are from the 18th century with the exception of one 17th century mill.
Most are leased as dwelling units, but a couple are open as museums with attendants who can explain and demonstrate how the system worked. There is a food concessionaire near the entrance, and the food is not fabulous. On a nice day picnic items purchased before leaving Rotterdam would be more satisfying.
We spent the good part of a day in Delft. We visited two museums, both of which are essentially house museums, House Of Meerten was originally planned as a museum of the owner’s collections. But these were eventually distributed to other museums, and only the mansion itself remains. The caretakers were one of the few people in the tourist trade whose English was weak. But they insisted that we have tea in the room overlooking the garden, furnished with period furniture, i.e. late 19th century.
https://flic.kr/p/2rGQs2w
We also visited the Museum Paul Tétar van Elven, which was much more interesting, in part because we were snared by one of the volunteers who gave us a private tour of the house, explaining that the artist was a run-of-the-mill artist who mainly copied old Masters for clients and who made his money in railroad investment in Russia among other places. The house is full of paintings, some by him and some by others,
none particularly outstanding. The house is fully furnished and with the guide providing details, it gave a better understanding of middle class life of that time, also straddling the 19th and 20th centuries.
https://flic.kr/p/2rGWDe2
We had bought separate tickets for the two museums; a combination ticket would have been cheaper.
Other than that, we strolled through the very attractive town which would be less appealing in inclement weather.
https://flic.kr/p/2rGVYuB
Our third destination outside Rotterdam was The Hague. Our goal was the Mauritshuis, the Kunstmuseum The Hague, and the Escher in the Palace. This last one is near the Mauritshuis and is small enough to be an add-on. One goes to the Mauritshuis for the Dutch masters exhibited in a period palace. The Kunstmuseum is an Art Deco building, clearly influenced by Frank Lloyd Wright’s prairie style.
https://flic.kr/p/2rGXEvw
The impression is that most of the art in that museum dates from the inter-war period.
https://flic.kr/p/2rGXFcX
But it also has period rooms going back to the 17th century, and it had a special exhibit on desserts (mainly cakes) which had to have this painting:
https://flic.kr/p/2rGWCoA
Back to Rotterdam. All tourist information touts the Depot of Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen (red star 2) as an alternative to the museum itself because it is closed for renovation. It sounds appealing but is really disappointing. The core of the tower consists of staircases and elevators which give the feeling of an Escher painting.
https://flic.kr/p/2rJU3fE
The artworks are preserved in storage spaces that are on the outside. Entrance to the storage room is tightly controlled by number of visitors in a group and the number of groups allowed in any given section is very limited (perhaps as little as four per day?). One cannot wander freely in the sections, and the tour basically explains conservation practices but little about what we are seeing beyond its physical elements.
On the other hand we had a wonderful meal at the top of the tower with a view of the hanging forest, Reservations are a must, entry is after closure of the Depot to the general public. Judging by some of the clientele, it is a celebratory locale.
https://flic.kr/p/2rJT7wv
Near the museum there are a series of villas that probably were built around the same period of time, the inter-war period. One at least can be visited, and be seen as a fully furnished villa, including kitchen and bathrooms. It’s the Sonneveld House (number 51 on the map), definitely worth a visit. An audio guide is provided containing excellent narration.
https://nieuweinstituut.nl/projects/huis-sonneveld
One of the villas was designed by Rietveld, but it was closed or perhaps is never open to the public.
Here are the full albums related to this trip:
https://flic.kr/s/aHBqjCCLEt
https://flic.kr/s/aHBqjCBA36
Last edited by Michael; May 17th, 2026 at 03:16 PM.
Yesterday | 04:18 PM
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Joined: Jan 2004
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Thanks for sharing. This was interesting to read, having also been there recently — about a month before you. We spent four days in Rotterdam (all in and around the city) and didn't get to everything we had hoped to. If you happen to go back, don't miss the FENIX, a new art museum designed around the theme of human migration (red star #14 on your map). It just opened in May 2025 and hadn't been on our radar until our apartment host urged us to go. Really well done.
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