Rotterdam and Embarkation

The preliminaries are done and we are on the floaty boat. I am experimenting with adding a few photos to the blog, would appreciate any feedback about whether it’s a good idea … I’m sure my process will improve from the challenges I’ve had today trying to attach them. 

After arriving in Rotterdam on Friday the five of us convened at our Airbnb and walked to a nice event cache in Het Park which struck me as a very European park with lots of sidewalks and greenery, very flat, good signage, and not a playground in sight. We were 5 of the 8 attendees. Then dinner was a delicious burger and tasty fries. I refrained from using the default Dutch dipping sauce: mayonnaise (with respect to fries I am wholeheartedly British as I prefer malt vinegar). After a quick grocery run to buy breakfast provisions including some delicious  blueberries, I achieved my flight-day goal of staying awake until 8pm. 

Saturday was a bit more ambitious. As in walked over 15,000 steps ambitious. We did what five geocachers traveling together do — we found a few caches. First an adventure lab (but not the associated bonus) in Museumpark (stopping at exactly zero museums) which was a very nice park. The highlight there was a circular mirror-covered building. We walked toward another cache and found ourselves near Rotterdam’s iconic statue — which June had spotted the day before — of Santa Clause holding, well, something phallic. 

After a disappointing lunch we found ourselves at a free outdoor puppet show area but the show wouldn’t start for more than 10 minutes so we decided to skip it. Somehow we ended up chatting with a Dutch person who made a point of stating that they identified as part of the local LGBTQ community since they had a transgender wife and we discussed politics including the challenges of 47. After the conversation the puppet show was just a couple of minutes away so we sat down to watch. Alas, the young children in the audience understood way more than we did — presumably their Dutch vocabulary was far more extensive than ours — and, feeling inadequate, we continued our walk. 

Soon one person decided to return to the lodging so we were a group of four as we meandered  to the Markthal (market hall) which was a Quonset-hut shaped building filled with stalls selling food and other items. It was very crowded, hot and humid inside so we didn’t stay long. We did stay long enough for me to purchase my first sorbet of the trip — a scoop of dragonfruit which was interesting and a scoop of strawberry which was a bit disappointing. The picture shows a bit of the ceiling 

Then we walked a block or two to the cube houses, or Kijk-Kubus. They are very interesting architecturally but also very odd as the amount of unusable indoor space seemed excessive given that the cubes are tilted at a 45 degree angle. The picture shows only a few of them 38 cubes in the complex, nearly all of which are private residences. 

At one point we identified a life-sized chess board and some plastic objects that we decided were chess pieces. Geekiness abounded as we felt compelled to arrange the pieces for a game, though we resisted the urge to play. 

Our caching continued as we meandered down by the river where there was a 2-lane 100 meter “track” painted on the walking surface. Then we decided we’d had enough heat and humidity for the day and returned to our lodging. We agreed that dinner would be a grocery store picnic, then called it a night. 

Today we had to check out of our lodging by 11am but (theoretically) could not board the ship until 12:30. So, good geocachers that we are, we met shortly after 8:30 for a 1.5 mile/(2.5 km) walk, er caching run, with our first find in yet another lovely park, this one a nice garden. Then back to our lodging, a quick tram ride — that would have been quicker had we not been delayed by the drawbridge of the Swan Bridge opening — and boarding the ship. Interestingly we had been told that the earliest boarding was noon but we were on board a bit earlier. 

Our group is about 40 people, about 2/3 most of whom I knew before the cruise. The ship started moving on schedule and we meandered out of the Rotterdam area. We passed at least two windmill farms in the water and are now on our way to Norway.