Day 37: Dordrecht Day 2

Day 37:  Dordrecht  Day 2,  Sunday  January 16^th

With Roger’s shoulder feeling very bad, we took the early part of the day to just relax at Rob and Damien’s place while they went out for lunch.  Roger pretty much slept until 4:15.  We considered having  it X-rayed but decided that there wasn’t much use, because even it he has something broken, all he can do is rest it.   So we have fashioned a sling for him out of one of my scarves and that has helped him to rest his arm.   We think that he has probably torn ligaments or something similar.

About mid afternoon, Robyn and I went for a walk around their area of Dordrecht.  This gave me a chance to see the harbour of this city which is the oldest city in Holland.  The old gates from the harbour, dated 1418 are quite a feature, as are the colourful houses and the considerable number of house boats that line the harbour.  It was a lovely sunny afternoon and many people were out walking or riding bikes.

I haven’t yet mentioned the bikes here (apart from those that caused us grief).  They are just everywhere and everyone seems to ride them or to walk.  The area where R&D’s apartment is is the centre of Dordrecht and this area is restricted to vehicles, so people simply don’t own cars.  Robyn and Damien have swapped their Melbourne vehicle fleet of two cars and a motorbike to now owning three bicycles.  One bike does Damien for his ten minute trip to work.  Robyn has two bikes – one here and one in the Hague where her school is.  She rides down to the station where she locks up her bike.  Then, after the 45 minute train trip to The Hague, she unlocks her Hague bike, which is locked up at the station along with hundreds of other bikes and she rides to her school – about a ten minute ride.

It is quite common to see a bicycle just sitting in the street, not chained up to anything.  After we had passed one of these at about 11pm on the first night we were here, we asked Robyn and Damien if that was common.  They confirmed that it is and said that there is a sort of unwritten honesty code regarding bikes here.  If the bike is worth more than 100 euro, the understanding is that one probably shouldn’t pinch it.  However, anything of lesser value is really fair game and the owners of these bikes really don’t expect to have them long term.

After our walk, we all then set off for Rotterdam where we had booked on the ‘pancake boat’.  This is a one hour cruise on Rotterdam’s harbour.  Pancakes, both savoury and sweet are served on an ‘all you can eat’ basis – Roger heaven!!  It was about twenty minutes on the train to Rotterdam, which is a city with some wonderful contemporary architecture.  It was completely bombed during the war and so doesn’t have the wonderful old buildings.   There are many hastily built post war buildings which are really very ordinary, but these new ones are quite spectacular in design.

The pancake boat was great.  We had wonderful views of the harbour and its lights, including a wonderful bridge which is quite famous but which I cannot remember the name of.  There were quite a few children on board and after they had eaten, they found their way to the bottom deck of the ship which has been completely filled in with a huge ball pit.  I can imagine that this one hour cruise would be a great kids’party favourite.

Tomorrow we are going to Amsterdam.  We will stop for an hour or so at Delft on the way.  We have booked in to Anne Frank’s house in the afternoon.  We are planning to see the famous red light district in both daylight and early evening because R&D say that it is worth seeing for the beauty of the area in the day and the interst of the area by night.