Category: Travel

Netherlands, day 2 (day 11 of the trip)

July 16, 2023 / / 0 Comments

My friend and I took an afternoon ride around Zoetermeer and Bleiswijk, two suburbs of The Hague with 125,000 and 10,000 people, respectively. Read other posts from this trip.

Day 11

Friday, May 12, 2023 – 195 photos taken – find more on Flickr

  • I don’t remember what I did in the morning – I probably worked.
  • My friend and I left his flat on our bikes at 15:00 and met my other friend to eat at Mecca, where Zu, a neighborhood cat, wandered in.
  • After this late lunch my friend and I started our bike ride along the Rotte River (how Rotterdam got its name) towards Bleiswijk.
The Netherlands has a signed water route network for people driving boats
Rotte river
Modal filtering in Rotterdam that creates a plaza and bike parking area
Zu, the cat, outside the Mecca restaurant in Rotterdam
Rotterdam Tram
Electric DHL delivery truck powered by Bosch in Rotterdam
  • We biked atop a lot of dikes, through several rural neighborhoods, and past the Willem-Alexander Baan (a rowing course in an artificial lake).
  • We also biked under a temporary bridge. As I’ve written before I believe the Dutch are very good at building infrastructure, and that extends to temporary infrastructure as well including modular and prefabricated pieces like a bridge!
  • At one point it was time for a McFlurry. We turned off of the intercity bike path, through a comfortably large bike tunnel under a motorway, and into the McDonald’s parking lot, where was plenty of bike parking and e-bike charging points (I suspect that many of the bikes parked here belonged to the employees).
  • The McDonald’s was in a commercial area full of fast food restaurants and logistics and distribution centers nestled in one corner of a motorway interchange but throughout all of this was well-designed, separated bike and pedestrian infrastructure.
Electric bike charging at a highway-side McDonald’s
Bike path tunnel
Willem-Alexander Baan (rowing course on an artificial lake)
Modular temporary bridge
Old lock
Old windmill along the Rotterdam River
  • After the ice cream break we headed over to an odd new transit interchange station called Lansingerland-Zoetermeer. Here people can change between a small park and ride, a kiss and ride, buses, sidewalks, and bike paths, to a ground-level intercity train station (to The Hague or Gouda) or to an elevated light rail station to The Hague. Service to Rotterdam is also possible via two bus routes to a nearby Rotterdam Metro station but I’m not sure why you would have gotten into a situation where you would need that connection.
  • (I’m calling it light rail for simplicity, but if you’re looking at how the street and sub-street rail transit networks overlap in Rotterdam-The Hague-Delft you could get easily confused. For example, there is a Rotterdam Metro [light rail] line to The Hague but which is also called RandstadRail, a RandstadRail line from The Hague to Zoetermeer, trams in The Hague, and different trams in Rotterdam, as well as a single tram line from The Hague to Delft but no Rotterdam Metro and no Rotterdam tram to Delft – there are Sprinter and Intercity services instead.)
  • I think something that is really neat about the station’s design: if you arrived there for the first time via the light rail then it would be very hard to tell that you would be standing on a bridge over an intercity track and a motorway after disembarking. The station looks very typical and uses vegetation and a wall to block the sound of high-speed vehicles below.
Southern entrance to the station (ground level)
Two light rail trains
An Intercity train towards Gouda does not stop at the station
A “rural” bus transfer center (with light rail and Sprinter stations)
Rotterdam city center is eight miles southeast of the station
A typical station
The station as seen from the bike path
Approaching the station from the incline bike path
The station as seen from the bike path that parallels the motorway towards Zoetermeer
  • Next we arrived into Zoetermeer, greeted by two cats. (There are a lot of cats roaming the traffic calmed neighborhood streets in the Netherlands.)
  • Zoetermeer is a “new town”, in that its prime development period was in the second half of the 20th century after many urban planning principles had changed, the automobile was a major factor in city design, and European countries were still rebuilding many cities after World War II – growth started in earnest in the 1960s when new housing was needed.
  • The population growth, in typical modern Dutch fashion, happened in a way that planned residential, commercial, and retail land uses, transportation, and green space, in concert with each other. These compact and mixed-use patterns – where most of what one needs is accommodated for or provided nearby – are repeated easy to discern even if you only visit a few towns, including Zoetermeer, Almere, Houten, Diemen, and the newer, outer parts of Rotterdam, Amsterdam, and Utrecht.
Cat walking in the middle of the street in Zoetermeer
The central lake of Zoetermeer
An outdoor mall
A residential building in Zoetermeer that has on one side a parking lot, and on the other sides green space, bike paths (red/brown), and a bus lane (gray).
  • At this time we had been cycling for less than three hours but it felt like longer because of the seemingly large gaps between stops (in fact, they’re not that large, it’s that they’re separated by wide expanses of open space or industrial areas rather than continuous low-density built up area like you would see in the United States).
  • We turned around to go home, via another way (see the Strava map below). The return route took us on a path that paralleled the bus-only road that carries two routes between the Lansingerland station and the nearest Rotterdam Metro station at Berkel en Rodenrijs, adjacent to where I was trainspotting yesterday (as well as some intermediate stops to reach the greenhouses).
  • The bus-only road has a self-enforcing design. There is a “bus sluis”, or “bus sluice”, or “bus gate” (see my photo), which is a dip in the road where car wheels go but a height increase in the road between the wheel area. This means that if you’re driving a vehicle that is not high off the ground like a bus or a farm equipment you will severely damage the underside of the vehicle.
  • Oh, yeah, this area is the greenhouse zone of the country where lettuce and tomatoes and other vegetables are grown for the country and for export, propelling the Netherlands to have one of the highest agricultural GDP in the world.
A new housing development at the edge of Zoetermeer
Biking through an allée
A bus stop for greenhouse workers
The LIJN BUS indicates the beginning of the bus-only road
The bus-only road and the bike path amidst greenhouses
  • Amidst the greenhouses is the HSL (the high-speed line between Amsterdam Schiphol airport and Rotterdam Centraal). I stopped at least once to take some photos and videos of the Thalys, Intercity Direct, and Eurostar trains that ply this route.
  • Along the route I saw what looked like an amazing playground called Tuin van Floddertje. Floddertje is a children’s book character, a girl who gets into all kinds of dirty messes immediately after washing up.
Tuin van Floddertje (adventure playground) #1
Tuin van Floddertje (adventure playground) #2
Tuin van Floddertje (adventure playground) #4
Tuin van Floddertje (adventure playground) #3
  • We rolled back into the neighborhood where my friend lives and said hi to “Loofje”, the yellow tabby cat that I named “Little Loaf” using a fake Dutch word I invented that’s pronounced “loaf-juh”.
  • This is also when I saw the neighborhood square that helps make this a complete neighborhood, since it’s 20 minutes away from the city center.
Château-inspired high-rise residential building
Loofje, the loafing cat in Rotterdam
Neighborhood square in north rotterdam
A tram on a one-way section of the loop route in north Rotterdam
Strava map of our bike route today

Netherlands, day 1 (day 10 of the trip)

June 12, 2023 / / 0 Comments

I arrived to Rotterdam via ferry over the English Channel from Harwich, England, on Wednesday evening (day 9). This part of the travelogue is about day 10. Read other posts from this trip.

Day 10

Thursday, May 11, 2023 – 289 photos taken – find more on Flickr

  • I woke up to have breakfast with my friends, who I was staying with. They were going to their offices in Amsterdam, but rather than travel with them I decided to get ready a bit slower and meet them in the evening for dinner.
  • I left their house at around 10 AM and started cycling, on the OV-fiets shared bicycle, owned by NS, the Dutch national railway company, that I picked up the day before. My destination was Rotterdam Centraal station so I could return the bike and hop on an Intercity Direct high-speed train to Amsterdam (the train runs high-speed between Rotterdam Centraal and Amsterdam Schiphol airport). But I was distracted by the planes landing at the Rotterdam-The Hague (RTM) airport, which is five minutes from my friends’ house.
  • At this point I realized I didn’t really need to be anywhere soon, so I kept cycling. My friend D. had already pointed out a place to spot trains on the “HSL” (high-speed line) so I headed there, which is about 10 minutes north of their house, in between Rotterdam and a suburb called Rodenrijs. Dutch land use is quite compact. The built-up area ends with a hard line and then there’s either agricultural land or nature preserves. The area between their neighborhood and this suburb had a bit of both. From this location I spotted Thalys, Eurostar, and NS’s Intercity Direct trains in both directions.
  • Having enough of this I cycled back to the house to recharge my phone (I had already used half of the battery recording so many photos and videos in two hours). Only then did I cycle 18 minutes to the station and board the next ICD train. ICDs depart every 15 minutes, so I didn’t bother to target a timed departure. I also like to get an “American cookie” at Kiosk, a $5 cold cuts sandwich, and drinkable yogurt.
  • On the train I spotted my trainspotting spot (view it on a map).
Planespotting at RTM
Entering the pasture on a rebuilt cycle path that doubles as a farm and railway access
An Intercity Direct train towards Amsterdam
Snacks for the road
Where I was trainspotting just an hour ago
  • At Schiphol airport station I changed trains to a Sprinter to Amsterdam Zuid (south) station, where I changed to the Amsterdam Metro so I could disembark at Jan Van Galenstraat station. Why? That’s the nearest station to where the bike I own lives. (It lives at another friend’s flat, who lend it to their visiting friends occasionally.)
  • Schiphol airport is a notable station: it has six platforms and trains to everywhere in the country, plus Thalys trains to Brussels and Paris stop here. My friend will sometimes take the train from Rotterdam, disembark here, and bike the rest of the way to his Amsterdam office to ensure he gets enough cycling in that day.
  • I unlocked my bike (which my friend had set out for me the day before) and rode it northeast towards the city center. My destination was the Allard Pierson Museum because I wanted to see their “Maps Unfolded” exhibit. The exhibit displayed maps created by Dutch people and over the last 400 years, showing the Netherlands, places colonized by the Dutch, and maps of the world made by Dutchies.
  • As usual, I missed a turn or two but serendipitously encountered a recent major streetscape change (basically a project that converted asphalt and space for cars to space for people and more landscaping – read about the changes at Nieuwezijds Voorburgwal on Bicycle Dutch).
  • The upper floors of the Allard Pierson Museum gave me great views of the Rokin canal, the shops that front it, the cyclists that ride it, the tourists and Amsterdammers that lunch on the water’s edge, and the tour boats that slowly motor along.
An older Sprinter train
Green transportation city
Sometimes you have to wait for a boat to pass, just like in Chicago
My Giant bicycle (did you know that Giant makes Dutch-style bikes?)
A tram passes through Nieuwezijds Voorburgwal
A disturbing map that shows the inundation areas if sea level rises 1 meter.
An Amsterdam tram travels on Rokin (streets next to canals are named after the canal, and the canal is basically the centerline of the street, with odd number houses on one side and even number houses on the other side).
  • After the museum I checked out the new underwater bike parking garage. Read that again. The Dutch have built an underwater. bike. parking. garage. Watch this 1-minute time lapse video that shows how it was built. A canal area in front of Amsterdam Centraal station was dammed and emptied of water. The garage was built, with a watertight roof and vertical circulation and the water was replaced.
  • This bike parking garage has 7,000 spaces, on double decker racks that use pistons to assist bicyclists in lifting the upper racks up and down. Again, Mark W. has demonstrated this over and over again on his blog. Each of the numbered aisles indicates about how many spaces are free.
  • The garage replaces two other garages on the south side of the station, and is part of a long-term project to “clean up” the areas around the station. (The project includes enlarging waiting areas for the tram platforms, reducing lanes for cars, preventing vehicles that aren’t taxis and mobility transit from getting close to the station entrance, and decluttering bikes.)
  • Everyone who uses the garage must check in their bike using their OV-chipkaart (public transport smart card) or a contactless bank card or smartphone wallet. This way the garage automatically tracks that everyone who leaves with a bicycle was also tracked as entering with a bicycle (although the system doesn’t check that it’s the same bicycle).
  • The bike parking garage has a direct entrance to the Metro station and the train station (where one can board trains to anywhere in the country, as well as to Belgium, France, Germany, Poland, and I think Czechia).
Entrance to the underwater bike parking garage at Amsterdam Centraal
Heading down the travelator into the underwater bike parking garage
Walking the bikes to the checkin barrier-free turnstile
The columns indicate space availability
Double decker bike parking
A view of the vertical circulation into the underwater bike parking garage
  • The next new thing to see is the IJboulevard, an extension of land into the former bay called the IJ on the north of Amsterdam Centraal. (I really don’t know what to call it now, the Wikipedia article calls it a “body of water”.) The IJboulevard is a kind of linear plaza that’s as long as the train station shed, a new public space. It wasn’t hot when I was traveling, but I’ve recently seen complaints on Dutch Twitter that it’s oppressive without landscaping.
  • Also on the north side of the train station is the bus station, which is on level two (or level one if you’re European). It’s been there for many years, but it’s impressive due to its operations and the architecture.
  • The ferries are also on the north side of the train station. This station is truly a multimodal hub. It’s one of the most fascinating and bustling places to be in the city. There are two ferry routes here for pedestrians and bicyclists to the north side of the IJ, and another ferry route a quarter mile to the east. All the ferry routes are free and operate 24/7 because there are no bridges or tunnels for pedestrians or bicyclists (even if there were they would be sorely inconvenient because of their length and depth or height). Since 2018 there has been Metro service to the north side of the IJ; this allows bicycles but there’s a fare and doesn’t operate 24/7.
  • Ferries are designed to walk and roll on and go back and forth; they don’t need to turn around. They leave on a schedule – pay attention to the countdown screens at each dock – but must yield to boat traffic already in the IJ, which I got to watch.
Bus station at Amsterdam Centraal
Ferry waiting for cargo ship
Ferry proceeds after the cargo ship has passed
The IJboulevard (two ferry routes are in the background, and a third ferry route is behind me)
  • It was time to move on, towards the restaurant where I would be meeting my Rotterdam friends. I biked to Vondelpark, Amsterdam’s main park. Vondelpark is surrounded mostly by housing so it connects to side streets, but it’s crossed by a main street and buttressed at the south end by a main street separates it from Rijksmuseum and Museumplein.
  • Because of how it’s connected to so many side streets, and a couple main streets, Vondelpark makes a greater “intersection” for through-routes. But it’s also a wonderful place to cycle for people watching, recreation, or to cycle in circles, like I did. Using my new handlebar phone mount I recorded some video and captured this awesome scene of three bicyclists riding side by side by side all turning at the same time!
11-second video of what appears to be some very fluid and coordinated cycling in Vondelpark.
Cycling next to a tram
Bridge in Vondelpark
Cycling under Rijksmuseum to Museumplein
  • We ate dinner at a vegan burger restaurant called Vegan Junk Food Bar that dyed their buns hot pink as a fun gimmick (some of the food was good and some of it was mediocre) and afterward had beers at Brouwerij ‘t IJ (Brewery of the IJ).
  • From the brewery we walked about half an hour to Amsterdam Centraal station and boarded the next Intercity Direct train back to Rotterdam Centraal, and took the Rotterdam Metro back home – this time with my personal bicycle so I could have it for the next five days in Rotterdam, and a special ride around Texel island (in a future blog post).
Brick Expressionism (this is the Amsterdam City Archives building)
Ugly residential architecture
Koploper train, in the distance
Booking.com office, and an ICE train
Daniel and I walking in Amsterdam
The crappy bike area in the Intercity Direct trains (soon to be replaced by ICNG trains)

Ferry #1: UK to Netherlands (day 9)

May 27, 2023 / / 0 Comments

This is titled Ferry #1 because there is a second major ferry that I rode during this trip, from Den Helder to Texel island in the Netherlands, that I will write about later. Read other posts from this trip. This is day 9.

Two Wednesdays ago, on May 10, I spent about eight hours on a ferry from Harwich, England, to Hoek van Holland, Netherlands. (That’s pronounced “hook fawn holland”, by the way.)

I had an exciting time…so exciting that I captured 429 photos and videos that day. I also published an accompanying short video showing some of the unique parts of the ship and the voyage.

It started with a picture of an empty street during my early morning walk to the bus stop in Covent Garden, London, and ended with a picture of a long-awaited “döner box” for dinner in Rotterdam.

Months ago while planning my trip to Europe I decided that I would take one of the ferries from England to the Port of Rotterdam in the Netherlands (as my destination after the ferry was Rotterdam). At some point I decided upon taking the Stena Line from Harwich. P&O also operates a ferry, from Hull.

Other modes of getting across the English Channel are Eurostar, a train, and flying, which I’ve already done, in 1998 and 2014, respectively. (There was once a hovercraft service from Dover, England, to Calais, France, which ended in 2000.)

Stena’s ferries leave twice daily, at 9 AM and 11 PM. I was originally going to take a night ferry, but I booked a day ferry because I wanted to see the departure and arrival ports in the daytime, I didn’t want to have to stay up late to travel to the port and settle into the cabin, the day cabin is half price, and I wanted to work a little. The ticket was around $120, which included the crossing fare and the cabin fare for a private room with en suite shower and a window to the sea.

Getting to the port

I woke up at my friend’s friend’s flat – the one in Covent Garden – at 4:45 AM and walked over to Strand to catch a night bus to Liverpool Street Station. Taking the tube would be longer because of changes and there was approximately zero traffic ahead of the bus for the 18-minute ride. Plus, I remember that the journey planner indicated the Elizabeth Line – the most direct route – wouldn’t start running until a little after 5:30 AM, putting at risk meeting my scheduled train departure of 6 AM.

I hopped onto a Greater Anglia train that departed on time toward Norwich. I changed at Manningtree for a train that left for Harwich Town, calling at Harwich International, the name of the port. I took the train at this time because if I missed it there was only one more train that would get me to the port on time before check-in closed. If I missed the boat then I would have had to go back to London and buy an expensive same-day Eurostar ticket to get to Rotterdam. Needless to say, I made the train I wanted, and I got to the departure terminal 30 minutes ahead of check-in.

Walking through Covent Garden at 5 AM to catch a bus to Liverpool Street Station
Departure boards at Liverpool Street Station
The Greater Anglia train I took (the destination sign has not yet been updated to show Norwich)
Inside the second train I took, from Manningtree to Harwich International

Boarding the ferry

The smallest group of ferry travelers, it seemed, were “foot passengers”, those who walk on from the terminal waiting room like I did. The larger groups are those driving their personal vehicles onto the boat, and freight truck drivers. Bicyclists must use the same lanes as those driving on, but I don’t know how many of them there were.

There’s an airport-style security screening (although a bit simpler, as shoes can stay on) after which I presented my passport to a Stena Line staffer who gave me my boarding card. The paper boarding card has a barcode that doubles as the room key. The staffer told me to head down the gangway and off I went, onto the ship. I was the first foot passenger to board.

The Stena Britannica, as seen on approach of the train to Harwich International station
The Greater Anglia train I arrived on, at Harwich International station
Waiting area at the departure terminal in Harwich
Many RVs and camper vans in the parking lot (I don’t know how many were waiting to board, or how many were waiting for future arriving passengers to rent and drive away)
To the Ship!

What I found funny when boarding is that I encountered no other workers between the check-in desk and the cafeteria. I didn’t see anyone to guide me to my room; I didn’t even know my room number until I reviewed the boarding card for some kind of indication and saw “10384”; this meant deck 10 room 384.

I found my room alright – there are maps and signs everywhere – and dropped off my luggage and headed to buy some breakfast in the cafeteria, as the ferry would leave in about 45 minutes and I wanted to be outside to witness the departure. Breakfast consisted of oats porridge (oatmeal made with milk) for £5.

The vehicle boarding pier, as seen from the passenger bridge.
Passenger boarding bridge entry into the ship
View from my cabin window
My cabin for the journey (I showed my sister a video tour and she said the bathroom was significantly larger than the one in the cruise ship she sailed on)
Hallway of deck 10
“Orange stairs”

Leaving Harwich

Outside there was still a lot of action. Dock and ship workers were still moving semi-trailers onto the ferry. They had special tugs with very tight turning radiuses, and the drivers could turn their seats 180° so they could drive backwards. After the driver got the semi-trailer into place, workers on the deck would place a stand under the semi-trailer, the tug would drop it onto the stand and leave.

Deck workers would then tie the semi-trailer to the deck. Two adjacent semi-trailers could be tied simultaneously and there was enough room on the aft deck for two drivers to maneuver around each other. (This is shown in the video.)

Port workers shoved off the boat’s many ties and the ship slowly moved laterally away from the dock, and then the ship gradually made its way forward. I didn’t measure it but it felt like it took 10 minutes for the ship to finally slip past the Felixstore fortress and leave the harbor.

The ship passed two docked container ships, for Evergreen and MSC, being unloaded, and a couple of boats working to dredge the port. The port also had two lightships, a ship acting as a lighthouse. When leaving the port we passed an inbound MSC container ship, the MSC Sariska V (which I took 22 photos of…thank you brand new phone with three camera lenses).

Trailer tug on the Stena Britannica
One of the semi-trailers that was being turned around to be reversed into place
Dock workers removing the lines
A dredging ship in the Port of Felixstowe, across from the Port of Harwich
A lightship
A docked Evergreen container ship
the moored MSC container ship

On board the Stena Britannica

Since I awoke so early I skipped taking a shower at the flat, and I took one on board the ship instead. This was the largest ship I’d traveled on, by an order of magnitude. Prior to this the largest ship I’d traveled on is either the Staten Island Ferry or the Washington State Ferry to Bainbridge Island. I was wondering how I’d sleep.

The ship is incredibly stable. The minimal rocking was helpful or at least nonintrusive for my two-hour nap.

I took my laptop over to the cafeteria-lounge to work for a couple of hours. The ship has wifi and free internet access. Passengers can pay for higher-speed access, but I was only visiting webpages and I tolerated the standard speed.

The journey was nearly over pretty quickly, but I can’t account for all of the time. There was about an hour watching the departure, a slow hour showering and checking messages on my phone, two hours of napping, two hours of napping, and another hour of watching the arrival.

The hallways on the amenity deck are well-appointed
There are shops on the ferry, including duty free
There is a basketball court on the ferry
A ship passes in the same direction (view from one of the lounges)
A scale model of the ship, inside the ship
A view of the cafeteria
Oats porridge with fruit and honey for breakfast

Arrival

Rotterdam is one of my favorite cities in the world. There are a few reasons for my affinity. A primary reason is that a friend of mine lived there for many years so I visited a couple of times –2014 and 2015 – and got more than a shallow introduction. I also lived there for three months in 2016, and revisited in 2017 and 2022. After many years away, my friend lives there again (with his now spouse) so I am visiting again!

The ferry arrives to the Port of Rotterdam, which is the largest port in Europe, and at 41 square miles it’s larger than many cities. (See my other photos of the port during past visits, including a long bike ride.)

Stena asks that passengers in cabins pack out and wait in the lounges an hour prior to arrival so I gather my luggage and go outside to watch the mooring process. When it seems we’re docked I go inside to wait for the foot bridge to open so I can get out fast – I had to get into the city center to get my friend’s house key before he headed out to a show.

Once I’m off the ship there’s a long walk down to the terminal. Along the way I spot what’s being offloaded: a few manufactured houses were transported from the UK to the Netherlands. Huh.

The first wind turbines, at the westernmost edge of the Port of Rotterdam.
Looking southeast at Europort, just one of many sections of the Port of Rotterdam
Beach houses at the Hoek van Holland beach
A tanker ship leaving the Port of Rotterdam
A Port of Rotterdam pilot boat racing past our ferry
The town of Hoek van Holland
Part of the dock of our ship
The other Stena ferry that plies the same route
Docking

I entered the country and walked right up to the Hoek van Holland Metro station. To pay for transit, I have a personal OV-chipkaart (public transport smart card) that bills a bank account for usage on any transit service in the country – save for most ferry crossings – at the end of the month. However, Metro now accepts contactless bank cards and mobile phone wallets.

A manufactured house was transported on the ferry
Stena’s Dutch terminal had large scale models of their ships
The Hoek van Holland terminal is in an old railway station
A DFDS ferry operates seen from the Rotterdam Metro heading from Hoek van Holland station to the city center

Rotterdam Centraal

I took the Metro to Rotterdam Centraal Station, which also happens to be my favorite train station as I love its dramatic roof, wide open plaza (Stationsplein and Kruisplein), and beautiful boulevard approaches from all four directions. It’s designed well for passenger experience inside, too.

After getting the house key I checked out an OV-fiets, a “public transport bike” (literal translation), using my OV-chipkaart, and biked to my friends’ house. (OV-fiets are available only to those with a personal OV-chipkaart, which must be tied to a Dutch bank account and thus it is generally not available to tourists. It is rented on a 24-hour basis for €4.45, and must be checked in to a train station at least once every 72 hours.)

I quickly dropped off my luggage and biked back to the station so I could get a döner box from The Döner Company for dinner. Turkish fast food in the Netherlands is like Mexican fast food in Chicago: pretty good no matter where you get it, inexpensive, and ubiquitous.

The döner box – comprising salad, sliced beef, fries, and chili and garlic sauces – was as delicious as I remembered it being.

Metro station at Rotterdam Centraal station
Outside the paid fare zone in Rotterdam Centraal station
Looking towards the front entrance of Rotterdam Centraal station
The dramatic roof and front entrance of Rotterdam Centraal station
The public transport bike (OV-fiets) that I rented
The döner box

Animals of the Netherlands

May 16, 2023 / / 0 Comments

If you bike or walk around the Netherlands you’ll become a bird watcher, a sheep farmer, or a cattle herder, whether or not you intend to. There are animals everywhere – they’re mostly just outside the city centers but sometimes in the center, too! Need a better vantage point? Find a nature tower.

You’ll see swans, geese, ducks, magpies, herons, coots, pheasants, and meadow birds. Two cities have deer parks. Sheep – and lambs in the spring – are grazing along the bike paths. Texel island has two breeds of cattle and in Rotterdam there’s a group of Scottish Highland cows freely roaming in a small section of natural area without a fence that you can bike through.

Oh, there are also a lot of outdoor cats. And a campaign to keep them inside at night.

A heron flies from its perch on a bridge railing.

This post shows a selection of the animals I saw over six days exploring Rotterdam, Delft, and Zoetermeer, and the surrounding areas.

A family of geese
A sheep on Texel island
Scottish Highland cattle
A deer at a deer park in Kralingse Bos in Rotterdam.
Loafing cat
Lambs on Texel island
Cat walking down the middle of the road towards my oncoming bicycle
Sheep next to the bike path on Texel island
Wherever there’s water in the Netherlands there are birds
Geese at Kralingse Bos in Rotterdam

Speaking of that nature tower…it’s in the Ackerijkse Plassen nature reserve and you can see the skyscrapers of Rotterdam, 9 kilometers (5.6 miles) away.

Rotterdam in the distance, seen through the enclosed viewing area on the tower
Approach to the tower

England, days 7 and 8

May 14, 2023 / / 0 Comments

Day 7 (Monday)

  • My friend and I walked down about 190 steps in Covent Garden. Northern Line stations are “deep tube” stations” and several rely on large elevators to move passengers between the street and the platforms. There are staircases, of course, but the London Underground uses blunt messages on signs to discourages using them to go up.
  • We met our other friend for breakfast at Polo Club, a diner across from Liverpool Street station. He then set off to the airport to go back home.
  • My friend and I then took the tube to Farringdon station where we boarded a Thameslink train to Brighton, a city on the sea. (Read more about Thameslink below.)
  • Brighton is a place for resorts, attractions, and shopping. There are plenty of pedestrian streets with national and independent shops, many of them are quirky or vintage shop, and there are tons of restaurants and cafés. I got a millionaire’s shortbread from Jolliffes Coffee Shop. (I bake these, also called caramel slices, a few times a year after first having one in Australia in 2019 and I’ve sampled the Scottish and British versions at nearly every opportunity).
  • In Brighton we visited the pebble beach, had some beers at Palm Court Restaurant in Palace Pier, and checked out the Volk’s Electric Railway, apparently the oldest operating electric railway in the world and now a heritage line for tourists (although it provides a costly transportation route if you want to save walking east along the boardwalk by 1 km).
  • We rode a double decker Brighton & Hove bus uphill back to the train station, and had a beer and a snack at Grand Central. Then, we grabbed snacks and sandwiches at the M&S to-go shop at the station for the train ride back to London Bridge station.
  • From there we headed home to Covent Garden, walking over the Millennium Bridge, past St. Paul’s Cathedral, along Strand (a street name without a suffix), stopping in a pub for a pint (okay, I actually got half pints which I’m glad is a possibility at every place we went since I reduced my drinking to put off potential migraines).
Covent Garden station signs discouraging people from using the stairs to go up.
Jolliffes Coffee Shop

Day 7 (Tuesday)

  • Tuesday, May 9, was the trip’s final day in London for my friend and I. We spent the day trainspotting.
  • First we went to Embankment station on the Northern line to see the extreme gap between the train and the platform. A Transport for London (TfL) employee is always present to watch the platform and use a paddle to signal to the driver, via CCTV, that the train is ready to leave. They also have a wireless microphone connected to the PA system and shouts “mind the gap, mind the gap”.
  • From Embankment we took the Northern line to Nine Elms, in order to check out what a brand new Underground station in London looks like. We grabbed snacks at the Sainsbury’s hypermarket next door and then hopped back on the train to disembark at Battersea Power Station. BPS is a brand new, mixed use mega re-development of a former coal power plant. There are offices, residences, and an indoor mall, nestled in some prescriptive landscaping.
  • (Between the Sainsbury’s and the station there is a pedestrian alley with a very basic but acceptable design. Let’s call this the inter-building space. I like how common they are, even if not all of them are very pretty.)
  • We boarded a Thames Clippers “Uber Boat” which is a semi-frequent transit option on the River Thames. It’s a bit slow and expensive, but it has a bar on board, it’s relaxing and you can see a lot of the city. (The “Waterbus” in Rotterdam is much faster, but the Maas and IJssel rivers are wider and have less boat traffic.)
Embankment station
Nine Elms station
The pedestrian street between the Nine Elms station and the new, adjacent, mixed-use development
The “Uber Boat” (branding of the Thames Clippers transit boats).
Battersea Power Station in the background from the river bus
I saw on Twitter that people were complaining about a war on cars because the city had modified a road to force drivers to go at a safer speed.
Buns From Home café on Camden Passage in the Islington Borough of London

Almost done!

  • Next we went to Camden Passage, a pedestrian street behind Islington High Street, and encountered a controversial minor change to a roadway to slow drivers. This is also where we first tried some cinnamon rolls – including one with dulce de leche on top – at a Buns From Home location.
  • Regent’s Canal and Broadway Market were our next stops. The canal is used more as a place to live than to transport cargo. We had pints and a nutty snack at Dove Treehouse & Kitchen, a pub. I’ve been pleased at the variety of non-alcoholic beers on offer as well as the ability to get a half pint of beer anywhere.
  • On our way back to the flat in Covent Garden I got a döner box from a franchise called German Doner Kebab – and it was great. I first had döner box in Rotterdam in 2016 from a small chain (found only in large Dutch train stations) called The Döner Company.
A London Overground train crosses the canal
Someone is using a cargo bike, shown parked along the canal, to deliver boxes of flowers
A shared cargo bike for rent; the cargo bike was built by Raleigh
A gasometer near Broadway Market
A gate at Broadway Market prohibits drivers from using it as a through street, reducing noise and traffic along the mixed-use street

Transportation notes

The view from the upper deck of a double decker Brighton & Hove bus in Brighton.

Thameslink is a fascinating “subnetwork” of National Rail, running 24 hours a day on certain services of its many lines. Lines run through London to the suburbs. I would probably characterize it as a long-distance regional rail. The route to Brighton is high speed, sometimes reaching speeds of 100 MPH using third-rail electrification. The trains are fully articulated, so it’s always possible to move to a different car easily.

The interior displays rotate through several screens showing train loading to advise passengers where cars are less crowded, and which of the five bathrooms, including the accessible one, are occupied.