Travel: Rotterdam, Holland

Published on Wednesday 13 April 2011 21:02

Think of Holland, and windmills, tulips, clogs, canals and quaint wooden houses spring to mind. That's why Rotterdam has fewer visitors than Amsterdam - and yet Europe's largest port is a showcase for the inventive Dutch at their very best.

The Netherlands' most modern city has embraced the cruel fate which rained down on 14 May 1940 when the Luftwaffe bombed the old city centre to a pulp, obliterating offices, factories, churches, schools and more than 25,000 homes.

So Rotterdam started again, transforming itself over half a century into an architect-designed metropolis with Europe's largest, most daring and colourful skyscrapers scattered among the original canals, houses and parks.

The result - Manhattan on the Maas - is perhaps Europe's most successful combination of old and new, eccentric and awesome.

Take Hotel New York, for example. This splendid four-star hotel, built in 1880, was head office of the Holland-America Line for almost a century.

A repository of memory, it was the last piece of Europe glimpsed by emigrants heading for better lives in New York.

After the shipping line closed, the building reopened as a hotel in 1993 with every aspect of its nautical past retained, but sandwiched between the 33-storey Port Authority building and the 500ft Montevideo skyscraper.

The "don't touch" formality of iconic British hotels is completely missing.

Staff are chatty, the mood is relaxed and old leather cases, decking, sails and narrow, railed gangways surround a vast, busy restaurant/cafe which seats 370 people - on the March weekend of our visit almost every seat was taken.

The best way to see Rotterdam is on two wheels, weaving around canal paths, roads and underpasses on a totally seamless cycle network - safely separated from pedestrians and traffic.

Dutch bikes are elegant, confidence-building, sit-up-and-beg machines like the kind delivery boys once used - in Hovis ads, at least. No helmets are issued and no earnest, Lycra-clad, Tour de France-type cyclists are in evidence

We took an ArchiGuides bicycle tour devised by young philosophy graduate Eva Liukku and tarried beneath the statue of Dutch thinker Erasmus, discussing shopping, skyscrapers and Monty Python's Philosophers Song before cycling into the heart of the matchbox jumble that is the globally photographed and locally disliked Cube House complex. One of its original inhabitants has turned his own three-storey, topsy-turvey 1960s creation into a Cube House Museum - so gloomy that on the brightest day of the year, all the lights were on inside.

Holland's largest street market takes place every Tuesday and Saturday in Blaak square with a huge selection of fresh fish, endless varieties of Edam cheese, and a Woodstock-inspired selection of colourful, hippy-style clothes.

Recycled goods are popular - the WAAR centre features the ultimate in smart-thinking (screw-on funnels turn jam jars into milk jugs) and cultural one-upmanship (their cunningly devised Rotterdam mugs make the rival Amsterdam logo look distinctly negative).

The Euromast offers another unusual perspective - the slim tower has a fabulous brasserie at 100m and for the vertigo-free, a revolving platform descending from 185m.

But four centuries as Europe's largest port means Rotterdam is dominated by rivers and canals - a third of the city's surface area is water.

Spido tour boats speed into the heart of the Europort, past Titanic-sized boats, cantilever cranes bigger than the SECC and thousands of brightly coloured Lego-like containers - after an hour even dedicated landlubbers become keen boat-spotters.

Rotterdam's maritime past has given it a multi-cultural population, with 170 nationalities and the first Muslim mayor in Northern Europe. One hundred different cuisines are available - Dutch fare itself is tasty and affordable. We enjoyed meals at the former factory turned co-operatively owned cinema, cafe and restaurant complex, De Machinist, and open-air, organic cafe Piknik.

Just 26 minutes by direct fast train from Schiphol, Rotterdam is easy to reach and even easier to get around. Water taxis are fun and the Rotterdam Welcome Card gives unlimited tram, metro and bus transport with discounts on museums and restaurants. Above all, Rotterdam feels strangely undiscovered. Erasmus said; "No one respects a talent that is concealed." Perhaps Rotterdam is the exception that proves the rule.

THE FACTS

Flights from Edinburgh start from 105, www.skyscanner.net; Hotel New York, Koninginnenhoofd 1, Stadscentrum, 3072 AD Rotterdam, rooms from e198 (173) for two nights, tel [phone]; www.hotelnewyork.nl; Spido boat tours, www.spido.nl; De Machinist, www.demachinist.nl; ArchiGuides Tours, www.rotterdam-archiguides.nl; for more about Holland, visit www.holland.com/uk

Visit www.holidays.scotsman.com for more holidays

This article was first published in The Scotsman, 30 April, 2011