I visited Rotterdam on a P and O minibreak last week. The P and O mini cruises are fantastic value for money because at this time of year (February) two people travel for the price of one. Having previously visited Amsterdam and Bruges with P and O we decided to try Rotterdam. We purposefully avoided travelling on a Sunday because we thought everything would be closed, how we wished we had researched in it properly before booking! In Rotterdam Sunday is not a day of rest, unfortunately for us Monday is. We found that the only things open were The Euromast (quite an experience with a great cafe/restaurant half way up) and the Spido boat which took us on a tour of the harbour. Unfortunately the Genever distillery in Schiedam, the Pancake boat, the markets, the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen (which has work by Dali, Picasso etc) and the public cubic house to name a few were all closed. The only thing left for us to do in the afternoon was to look around the shops. We felt that looking round Rotterdam's shops was similar to looking round shops in one of England's cities, lots of chain shops and a bit of a disappointment to us. There were some beautiful clothes shops but prices were pretty steep. We also found that when planning our trip to Rotterdam the tourist websites were very difficult to use, both Bruges and Amsterdam's attractions have websites in a variety of languages but the majority of Rotterdam's were only in Dutch (fair enough I suppose as it is a Dutch speaking city but much more difficult to plan for tham if you were visiting Amsterdam or Bruges) We were disappointed with our trip to Rotterdam. I'm sure it is a great place to visit, there certainly are some great museums and attractions, but pick your days carefully - avoid Mondays. My ratings given are related to travelling on a Monday. ( I don't recommend it on a Monday but any other day would be fine I'm sure)
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Feb 19th, 2006
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