It was actually a beautiful day for this time of year, meaning that not only did it stop raining for parts of the day, but the sun actually showed itself for a few minutes as well. Approaching Rotterdam was pretty interesting in itself since the city looks so different from anywhere else we've been in the Netherlands. The fact that it's all new since the war is evident in the architecture long before you're downtown: you can see nothing but skyscrapers and modern-looking bridges towering over the suburban trees. Then as you approach the city center, something else becomes evident. Maybe it's the fact of its relative newness, or maybe they really have more street sweepers per capita, but this has to be the cleanest city in the Netherlands.
We parked along the waterfront (which seemed to comprise most of Rotterdam given all the intersecting canals and inlets) and walked a couple of blocks to the museum. We passed this nifty lichtschip, evidently properly called a "lightvessel," along the way. The museum is, appropriately, situated at the end of a smallish canal and has its own 1864 warship moored just outside for its visitors to wander. The kids, however, most enjoyed Professor Plons' play area where they recreated every step of the harbor shipping
process. It was way cool. They used cranes to load and unload large "cargo boxes" onto their little carts, then pedaled them through customs (that's douane in Dutch) where they could use a bar scanner to see what "cargo" they were carrying. Aislin got peanut butter, Dylan got pharmaceuticals. Eek. They spent well over an hour investigating every corner of that play area.Then they headed inside and spent another hour or more checking out every detail of the indoor exhibit/play area, but taking a special joy in commandeering the ball pit where they could feed balls into a vacuum system that sucked them up to the ceiling through clear tubes and then back into a box with a rope attached. When they pulled on the rope, all the collected balls
would tumble over the assembled kids. Talk about a recipe for entertainment. Our kids working in concert are a force to be reckoned with on a playground. They had the whole process down to a science by the second repeat. It was no easy feat dragging them away at closing time so that we could eat our picnic on the waterfront by the floating hotel. We finished off with a drive across the iconic Erasmus Bridge which was fantastic, although I think that Prince Claus Bridge in Utrecht might actually be aesthetically superior. Aesthetics aside, we thought we fared brilliantly for a spontaneous Sunday outing.
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