Discover Rotterdam in a special way with Splashtours
Rotterdam is a city I always love to visit. A beautiful metropol-like skyline, great restaurants, plenty of stores to go shopping and a lot of sights. And yet we managed to explore this city again in a whole new way. Namely, we went on a trip with Splashtours.
Splashtours – Bus ride with a splash in the Nieuwe Maas River
With Splashtours you get a tour of Rotterdam by bus. The first part of the tour goes through the city. You will for example cross the Erasmus Bridge, pass the floating forest, the Veerhaven and Katendrecht. The second part is the part that makes this tour very special.
The bus leads you this part around on the water! After leaving Katendrecht behind, the bus drives off the quay and straight into the river Maas. From the water you have a magnificent view of the Erasmus Bridge, the Wilhelminakade with its Hotel New York, the SS Rotterdam and much more. You also feast your eyes on everything that passes by in the water. Large container ships, the Pannenkoekenboot, pleasure boats and the lightning fast RIBs and water cabs.
A tour with a Rotterdam accent
During our tour we were accompanied by a driver/captain and a guide who introduced himself as Ger the sailor. A lovely flat Rotterdam man who explained everything we saw and drove past in his own way. With almost every sentence he had a nice flat pun and was constantly making fun of the children present. Once we were in the water, he also had all the children take turns coming to the front of the bus so everyone could enjoy the view through the large windshield. Not only was Ger’s Dutch explanation in his wonderful Rotterdam accent, but his English translation was also very entertaining. Although we did wonder if the foreign customers could make sense of this…. 🙂
A walk through the Maas Tunnel
After the bus tour we went for a walk. We walked past the Euromast towards the north side of the Maastunnel. Although the Maastunnel is closed to cars until the summer of 2019, the bike tunnel and pedestrian tunnel are still open. Here you descend a wooden escalator to the tunnel, which is about 20 meters below sea level.
The railings of this escalator describe the history and creation of the tunnel in short sentences throughout the descent. Once you reach the bottom you will find the bicycle tunnel. If you descend another small spiral staircase you reach the pedestrian tunnel. From here you walk to the south bank of the Nieuwe Maas in just under one kilometer.
To finish, have dinner at the Zwarte Zwaan
After this walk, which was an outing in itself because of the visit to the Maas Tunnel, we went back in the direction of the Splashtours boarding point. This is namely at De Zwarte Zwaan. A location from which you can do several fun things, such as a tour with Segways, paintballing and there is a real escaperoom. In addition, De Zwarte Zwaan is also a restaurant where you can get a great grill menu. Especially if you are looking for a fun outing with a group of people and want to stay for dinner afterwards, this is a great location.
