July 10 - Delft (Day trip to Rotterdam)

July 10 - Delft (Day trip to Rotterdam) 

 Off on a day trip to Rotterdam today, only 20 minutes away by train it was an easy ride before our first appointment. We’d booked a ‘free’ walking tour (you can pay the guide what you think they’re worth at the end of the 2 or 3 hour tour) for mid morning so there’d been no rush. Sarah, our guide, was great, and told us a lot of interesting stuff about many of the modern buildings in inner Rotterdam. Although the tour was very good we were actually a little bit disappointed with the city itself. In researching the city before booking this trip I’d read a lot about how fantastic the architecture was (as Rotterdam got flattened by the Germans during the war most of it needed rebuilding) but to be honest, with a few exceptions, a lot of it was a bit ho-hum. 
 After the tour we went for a bit of a hike to one of the port suburbs, Delfshaven. This was lovely, very olde Worlde but still in use by the many living in houseboats in this part of the world. Mostly well known for the distilleries making Jenever (the Dutch gin in ‘stone’ bottles), it’s also the starting point of the ‘speedwell’. This was the boat on which the Pilgrim Fathers sailed to England in the early 17th century prior to heading off to America on the ‘Mayflower’.
Top L: The ‘Pilgrim Fathers Church’. 


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