Delights of Rotterdam

We thought we might do our sightseeing in the morning and then head on to Delft, but we found that things don’t actually open till about 11 in Rotterdam, so that was unlikely to work. Anyway, we set off on a longish walk across the river to the town centre, where one of the first and most impressive sights is the covered market. The unusual thing about it is that the sides consist of apartments, with balconies.

Inside, the food stalls were many and various, and the smells most enticing. We limited ourselves to buying some spiced nuts, which seem to be a speciality.

Across the square was the public library, influenced quite clearly by the Pompidou Centre in Paris, but impressive all the same.

One of our main aims was to visit the famous cube houses, designed by Dutch architect Piet Blom. These consist of a cluster of houses, each in the shape of a cube, set on one corner and standing on a hexagonal pillar. The inspiration is partly tree houses. Anyway, as you can see, they are certainly strange:

There is an inner court, and the complex incorporates a walkway across a busy road to the Old Harbour.

We were able to visit one of the cubes, and agreed that it was clearly influenced by Le Corbusier’s Cité Radieuse, which we visited earlier this year in Marseille. However, the concept of modular living has been taken a lot further here. It was curiously well thought out inside and could have been OK for a single person or a young couple (the stairs are precipitous!)

After this visit we took a metro along to the main art museum, the Boijmans Van Beuningen.  This presumably reproduction of a Picasso marked the way:

We should really have lunched before embarking on our tour, because the collection is very extensive and takes quite a time. The development of Dutch painting was well illustrated, up to the present, more or less. There was also an excellent impressionists’ room, with Monet, Sisley, Cezanne and Gauguin all represented, and some Dalí painting that were not too repulsive. Lots of Reubens, however, that left us less than enthralled.

When we emerged it was well after 2.30p.m. and at first we looked in vain for something to eat – plenty of cafes and bars, but nothing to eat. However, finally we found an American-style burger joint that did the trick. Then it was the long walk back to the ship – this time across the massively impressive Erasmus bridge.

The office blocks in the background  are interesting too, and seemed to sum up the nature of architecture in much of Rotterdam – playful rather than pompous. Considering there was almost nothing left after WWII, it is an admirable city today.