Discover the Netherlands
Rotterdam shore excursions
Nineteen windmills from the 1740s are twenty-five minutes from your berth, and Vermeer's Delft is twenty. Very few passengers get to either.
The day we would take
Kinderdijk in the morning and Delft in the afternoon. Nineteen working drainage mills standing in open water where they were built nearly three hundred years ago, then a small city of canals and drawbridges where Vermeer painted and where the blue and white pottery is still made by hand.
The Hague is fifteen minutes further and holds the Mauritshuis, which has the Girl with a Pearl Earring. If that painting is on your list, we build the day around its opening hours.
An eight-hour call
We meet you at the terminal
Name sign at the Rotterdam Cruise Terminal.
Kinderdijk
Nineteen mills on a UNESCO site. Two and a half hours, including one mill interior.
Delft
Canals, the market square, the Nieuwe Kerk and the pottery works. Two and a half hours with lunch.
The Hague, optional
The Mauritshuis, or Scheveningen pier and the North Sea. An hour and a half.
Back at the terminal
Ninety minutes before all-aboard.
What is included
- Private Mercedes V-Class and driver for the full call
- Meet and greet at the Rotterdam Cruise Terminal
- A route planned around your all-aboard time
- Fuel, tolls, parking and all road costs
- No charge if your ship does not make the port
What is not included
- Kinderdijk, Mauritshuis and pottery works entry
- Food and drinks
- Gratuity
Questions
What is close to the Rotterdam terminal?
Kinderdijk is 25 minutes away and Delft is 20. Both are better uses of a day in port than Rotterdam itself, unless modern architecture is what you came for — in which case the city is excellent and you can walk to a good deal of it.
Is Kinderdijk worth it if we have seen Zaanse Schans?
They are different. Zaanse Schans is a preserved village of mills moved there from elsewhere. Kinderdijk is nineteen mills standing where they were built in the 1740s, in open water, on the UNESCO list. If you have seen one you will still find the other worthwhile.