Category: Rotterdam

Ferry #1: UK to Netherlands (day 9)

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.

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.

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.

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).

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.

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.

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.

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.

There are many kinds of shared space

A guy standing in the middle of the intersection

I took this photo outside the café Memory Lane in Rotterdam because the man in the white shirt was standing in the “middle” of this intersection for a couple of minutes. Before he took this position, he was walking slowly across the intersection to the opposite corner as his car. He’s a livery driver, and he appeared to be waiting for his passenger.

This intersection is raised (the sidewalk is level with the road surface), and is uncontrolled (there are no traffic signals, stop signs, or yield signs). A bicyclist or motorist can pass through this intersection without having to stop unless someone is walking, or a bike or car is coming from their right.

This junction has no crosswalks, either. And no one honks. Especially not at the man who’s in the roadway.

Because he’s not in the roadway. He’s in a street, and streets are different. Streets are places for gathering, socializing, eating, connecting, traveling, and shopping. There was plenty of space for him to stand here, and for everyone else – including other motorists who were in their cars – to go about their business.

Riding on a ring of Rotterdam

Map of bike ride around some Rotterdam harbors

This map shows my bike ride starting from “My flat” and going west, then south, then east, and north.

Read more frequent sabbatical updates on my Tumblr.

Two Thursdays ago I took a two hour bike ride around the western part of Rotterdam and some of its harbors. I used “GPS Recorder” for the iPhone to track my trip, and it registered that I biked a little under 38 kilometers (24 miles). The trip is notable because it uses both the Beneluxtunnel and the Maastunnel (the river is called “Maas”, pronounced like the Spanish word “mas”), and the route one takes differs depending on where they begin and end.

My bike parked on the canal in front of my flat

Sometimes I park my bike on the canal in front of my flat, and other times there’s bike parking on the sidewalk. Look at the boat; in the back you see a car. Most shippers take a car with them so they can drive around the city at their destination. Some ships have the car already in a kind of tray that can be lifted by a crane dedicated for this purpose where they dock.

I started at my flat in the Nieuwe Westen neighborhood, across the canal from Spangen, about 10 minutes west of the Rotterdam Centraal train station. From there I headed slightly north to cross the canal on a bridge that carries a main road past the Sparta football stadium. Then it heads into the suburb of Schiedam and through a very pretty nature preserve.

Most bridges are moveable. This one is a bascule bridge and those red and white poles are the gates that close the road and the bike path.

Most bridges are moveable. This one is a bascule bridge and those red and white poles are the gates that close the road and the bike path.

Beyond the nature preserve the route winds past some “havens” (harbors) and reaches the north side of the Benelux tunnel. An escalator takes you and your bike down about three levels to a tunnel that’s separated from the northbound highway by a full-height wall. There’s an elevator, also, which “bromfietsen” (scooter) riders must use.

Riding south towards the northern Beneluxtunnel entrance

The north bike/pedestrian entrance to the Beneluxtunnel.

On the south side of the harbor you pass through a village, Pernis, in the city of Schiedam. To give you a sense of how connected small towns in the Netherlands are by transit, it has its own metro rapid transit station. This is the only part of the route where there’s not a dedicated bike path.

Abandoned house in Schiedam

An abandoned house in Pernis, taken from the bike path atop a “dijk” (dike). Behind the line of trees is the Metro line C and the A4 motorway, which is heading to and from the same tunnel I came out of.

After the village, the bike path goes south and up on an overpass to cross over a railroad and then takes you down to the east. The path parallels freight railroad tracks and a highway. Huge machines upon which the AT-AT walker in Star Wars was modeled are dormant in one of the many intermodal yards on the harbor.

The bike path has to cross the highway to the south side of it, and there’s a signalized intersection to make this maneuver. I don’t think there’s such a thing as a timed intersection in the Netherlands. Every one I’ve passed through and paid attention to has a sensor of some kind. In many cases this reduces the amount of time any one person has to wait (okay, that sounds impossible, but it’s also dependent on the time of day, the traffic volumes of each mode, and which road or bike path is supposed to have priority). As I pedal toward the intersection it turns green before I get there, so I don’t have to stop.

I have to make another crossing over railroad tracks and get to the other side of a different highway. There’s another overpass this time. I stopped on my way down because some workers were carrying containers on what looked like Transformers-sized forklifts.

Bike around the Rotterdam harbor from Steven Vance on Vimeo.

After the overpass is a path under the highway, and from here and to the east most of the harbor is far away. There are office buildings on the north side of this path, and a railroad yard on the south side. Between the office buildings are tracks so trains in the yard can reach the harbor. All of the tracks cross the bike path at an angle. Signs say “let op” (caution) and because a fence and hedges separating the bike path from the yard, it seems like a train could pop out onto the bike path at any moment.

Ten minutes later and I’ve reached a neighborhood. On the harbor side is what looks like housing for workers, and the other side is residential. I can see the Maastunnel’s ventilation shaft. One more corner turned and I can see the little house where “fietsers” (cyclists) and “voetgangers” (pedestrians; “voet” is pronounced like foot) take the escalator down.

There are separate levels for cyclists and pedestrians. It’s unclear where the road tunnel is, whereas the low rumbling noise I heard in the Beneluxtunnel gave away its position. The tunnel slopes downward toward the middle, so you can gain a little momentum but it seemed harder in the Maastunnel than in the Benelux tunnel because of what felt like a headwind (maybe the ventilation system is strong).

Maastunnel

Descending into the Maastunnel so I can ride north to home.

The Maastunnel was built from 1937 to 1942, and its 74-year-old age shows: the escalators have fascinating wooden steps. The walls along the escalators are adorned with photographs showing people using the tunnel, and other scenes of building the tunnel. The Beneluxtunnel was built in two phases, with the first group of two tunnels opening in 1967, and the second group of six tunnels, including the bike and pedestrian tunnel, in 2002.

Now that I’ve been riding around Rotterdam for four weeks I can always get home without consulting a map and it’s an easy ride home from the north side of the Maastunnel to home, and I can take several different routes that are all about the same distance and time.

I’m here in Rotterdam

Untitled

I arrived in Rotterdam last Saturday, 9 April. A friend of a friend, PK, picked me up at Rotterdam Centraal, the main station, the design of which I find fucking fantastic. By “picked me up”, he really did. He used his fancy “OV-chipkaart” multi-use transit card with associated “OV-fiets” bike-share membership to check out two bikes for me and him. I carried two pieces of my luggage, and he carried a third, and we biked back to my friend DS’s apartment. (PK had been living there temporarily while he looked for an apartment somewhere in the country.)

I’m posting frequent updates to my Tumblr. And my photos get automatically uploaded to Flickr. I also post photos to Instagram, and to Twitter.

All the luggage I brought for three months in Europe

PK let me into the apartment and then we went to the Albert Heijn grocery store. PK soon departed to catch a train to another city for a birthday party. I took a three hour nap. I didn’t do anything else on Saturday. DS would return from his holiday on Monday evening.

  • On Sunday I biked around the city.
  • On Monday I met with Meredith, an expat living in Amsterdam. I also slept a bunch off and on. DS came home and we went out to dinner. We also went back to the grocery store and tried to figure out why neither my debit nor credit card would work. Albert Heijn, since I was there in September 2015, has changed their machines and policy and won’t accept my bank cards!
  • On Tuesday I met with my friend Stefan. I found “Bataviakade” in Delfshaven. And slept at odd hours. I fell asleep on the couch at 20:00 and went to bed at around 00:00.
  • On Wednesday I slept until 13:00. I then followed up on some emails, fixed some stuff on Chicago Cityscape, and vacuumed the carpets. Then DS and I went out for beers and burgers. On our way home I bought a six-pack of (small cans) Heineken beer for €7 at a “night shop” called, well, “Night Shop.”

Bataviakade street name in Delfshaven, Rotterdam

“Bataviakade” means “Batavia quay”. I grew up in a city called Batavia, Illinois. The city was named after Batavia, New York. Batavia is the Latin word for the “Betuwe” part of the Netherlands.

It’s now Thursday and I’m going to try and open a bank account here. This means I’ll get a debit card which will open so many doors; many places don’t accept international bank cards. It also means I can pay rent and for a bicycle without lower or no fees. After I get a bank account I can get a discount travel card to use on NS, the national intercity train operator.

For €99 per month I can take unlimited trips on the intercity trains during off-peak hours and on weekends. I’ll be able to visit a lot more cities with this card, and I already have plans to use the train tomorrow, Saturday, and Sunday (that’s three round trips). The train fares add up! At least this weekend I’ll be traveling with DS; he has a travel card and companions can buy travel together with a 40% discount.

I didn’t get to publish this before I left the house. I went to the bank and the kind worker said it wasn’t possible to open a bank account for someone who’s staying here for such a short time. She said there’s a monthly maintenance fee, and I said I would be okay paying that while I’m not in the Netherlands between visits.

Anyway, my friend is going to help me get the discount travel card, which, to me, is the most important product I need.

I also need to file my American tax return today.