ADVENTURE ON THE ‘CONTINENT’ II (The real one!)

As you may remember, there was a plan to have a quick ferry visit over to Brugge. Well, we discovered that, thanks to a bank holiday in Belgium, it was shut for the day!!
So, plan two was for two of us to drive over to Hull, (you’ve guessed it, with the roof down! for the record, it’s now November!!) and take the overnight ferry to Rotterdam. Due to a cable getting tangled in the propeller (!!) and to allow divers time to fix the problem, I had plenty of time to overhear some interesting comments regarding the size of the ferry…. “gosh in’t it big” … that sort of thing. So, out of interest, some comparisons with the cruise ship I am heading to in a couple of weeks.

The Pride of Rotterdam has an overall length of 215.1m (705.4ft). It has a gross tonnage of 59,925t.
The Explorer of the Seas has an overall length of 311.1m (1,020ft). It has a gross tonnage of 137,300t. (With the recent arrival of The Freedom of the Seas, it’s not even the biggest one any more!)
Try to put some perspective on that, the difference in the length is equivalent to the length of a football pitch!
It is impossible to fully describe the size of these cruise ships and I am sure that when I see them again I will be just as astonished as before. They really do have to be seen to be believed. Sorry got carried away….. back to this trip!

It was a reasonably fun evening on board, watching the bingo and having the ‘turn’ entertain us, before losing nearly all my pocket money playing pontoon with the pretty ladies! Cabin was fine, after we found the top bunk, they had hidden it in the ceiling, but we were smarter than them! The ladder was cunningly held to the wall with Velcro!

Slightly unfortunate faulty screen!

Spent the next day on a coach, or so it seemed. 2hrs to Amsterdam 2hrs back. It would seem they have traffic jams in the Netherlands as well. Still left plenty of time to take in the sights of the city, even if certain bits (hmm) were full of visiting Austrian football fans who were there to see their team take on Ajax in the UEFA Cup.

Not the type of windmills I was expecting

One of many lovely buildings

‘Force 4 to 5 gales expected on return trip’ said the captain, so I got horizontal pretty quickly (they hadn’t bothered to hide the bunk this time!) and slept through most but not all of the big waves crashing against the hull.
Speaking of Hull, we arrived back to a cloudless blue sky. Who needs a car with a roof in this country?! Back in Wakefield in time for breakfast.

Will do Amsterdam again one day……… by air!