A Walk and a Float 2025: Intermission days 10-12 (end of Intermission)

We have been exploring Rotterdam for the past 3 days, taking a number of walking tours, using Geocaching to serve as a sort of tour-guide.
And we continue running into small cultural differences and technological deltas that surprise. (eg: Like the very popular Sissy-Boy clothing store).

Yesterday, some geocaching friends arrived from US/Canada (we will be on the ship as part of a 40+ person group, most of whom do geocaching). We met up and ate stuff. Wandered. Ate more stuff.
Tomorrow morning, we will board, and The Float will officially begin.

Most of this is best described through the pictures:

Day 10:
I'm still looking out for the birds. The diversity of birds here is not enormous, but I continue to watch out for both the 'usuals' and the few new ones that pop up. Here is a clutch of Egyptian Geese, being watched over by mom.

This is one of those *unusual* moments. Jana and I were doing a scavenger-hunt type thing down a trendy/funky street. A garbage truck pulls up (we were close by - but not THAT close by). A guy from the truck asks Jana to move (in Dutch) - she shrugs. He asks again for her to move - we move. This giant crane-arm comes down - clamps to the top of the garbage can, and starts to lift. It doesn't just lift the can, but also the 10' x 10' plate (or maybe 3m x 3m) below the can. And lifts, and lifts, and lifts - the underground container for the trash-can was as tall as the truck. Once hoisted over the truck, it dumped all the contents from the bottom. The angle here is not the greatest, but you can certainly see the immensity of the thing. You drop someone into that can, they go down about 15 feet (or maybe 5m).

We ate at this weird underground vegan place called Wunderdog. They run an alternative radio station that plays everything from Russian Folk to Scandanavian Punk to the Bar Theme from Star Wars. The tables are all on a rail, and move back and forth - if you sit down quickly, your table will slide until it hits the next table. And the bathrooms are all fully plumbed Port-o-Pottys. A lot of other wonkiness. We talked to one of the managers (owners/) for quite some time.

The guardian over a skate-park:

We moved to an apartment for three days. One constant is the ridiculously steep stairwells. In multi-floor buildings without elevators. I do not know how there are not more people with casts.

We went through one of the local large parks. Jana with some plants that look like giant Queen-Anne's Lace, but might be Cow Parsnip:

A Grey Heron landing in front of us:

And two of them becoming territorial:

Wildflowers are still blooming here, this far North:

A Bumblebee fully embedded in the hydrangeas:

At the end of the day, and just outside our 'new home' - more protests. A group blocked the intersection leading to a bridge. About 30 minutes. A lot of police presence - it seemed mostly to allow the protestors to do their thing, and keep a gap between them and anyone else (which seemed needed, considering the number of seriously angry drivers). After 30 min (exactly - from 8:45 to 9:15PM), they left and traffic/busses/trams/ resumed. A lot of cars drove over the curb and across the grass to U-turn.

Day 11:
Every day starts with steep stairs:

Remember this guy? Santa Claus? We have learned that what he is holding really is what it looks like, and his common name here is Kabouter Buttplug (Kaboutor means 'gnome'; I won't translate the second part). Although it created a bit of a scandal when it was first installed/revealed, he is now a bit of a celebrity, and we keep seeing him popping up around town (so far, I have spotted signs, T-shirts, flower pots). Every city has its thing...

We walked across the Erasmusbrug (Erasmus) bridge, known as "The Swan" . Though you can't see the swan part from this angle.

In the harbor, we saw a bus in the water. This is the Rotterdam equivalent of a Duck-boat. We later saw it getting out at its ramp. Since then, we have seen a number of these 'Splash Tour' buses around town

One of the sites here is the Euromast Tower, the tallest structure in Rotterdam (it lost its status at one point, and then added the big needle on top). If you zoom in... I don't know if these were window-washers???

Not a great image - but a Common Tern. They are fast and not big. Best I could do. You don't get to see the bright orange beak or black cap on the head:

As I mentioned, this far North, still some wildflowers - even poppies!

A Mute Swan in the harbor:

Oh - we toured the Rotterdam Ship. A big cruise-ship that is now permanently docked and converted to a hotel. I don't know why I took exactly zero pictures...

On the way back to our apartment, we were stopped on the Erasmus Bridge when it lifted to let through two sailboats. We were the first people to not make the gap. The whole procedure was about 15 minutes. About half of a protest. People seemed less angry by being inconvenienced by the two sailboats. In the last picture, you can see the mast of the ship passing through.

Day 12:
We started by touring the Museum Park, which includes this very cool mirror-bowl building - an art storage building, that is itself a piece of art. And it does tours for the stored art (if you choose to go), which kind of makes you question whether it is really a building for art storage, and not a gallery...

A Eurasian Moorhen next to the lake in the park. I kept hearing a Lesser Whitethroat and found the tree it was in, but could never spot it; same with a Eurasian Oystercatcher that seemed to be on the roof of a building.

A piece of artwork over the pond that extends (more naturally) into the lake in the park:

Walked around the side... and found that the parking garage for the museum is under the lake. The Dutch know how to manage their water...

We went to the Stadsdrehoek - A super giant mall/food-court (at least 3 levels below the airplane-hangar-style muraled ceiling). It is in all the guide-books. I did not get many pictures of the zoo inside. It was crowded at not so fun. But it did have one picture at one of the many, many, many stalls that I found amusing

A bit up the road, we visited the Cube Houses. They are cubic. Once you climb the very narrow staircase into the cube. And they are houses, except the one unit that is a 'museum' where you can climb a staircase into a cube. For the rest of them, that are houses, you can only walk around them and peek into the windows (most have pretty good shades, but you can still kind of peek around the edges). I'm not sure I'd want to live in one - not the shape, but that there are hundreds of tourists poking into all the windows every hour.

Another view of the Swan Bridge. Where you can kind of see the swan shape (the main structure being the body coming out of the water, and the cables being the wings).