2E Paasdag

Last Monday, the 13th, the day after Easter (Paas), is the 2nd Paasdag. It's the same thing they do at Christmas with the 2nd Kerstdag. I think it's just an excuse to get another day off. In the case of Easter, most businesses, including banks, were closed on Good Friday as well. That's a difference here as, in the US, banks cannot be closed for more than 3 days in a row, here they close for 5. Arjan and I spent the day as true Netherlanders.

First we went to the Woonboulevard in Barendrecht. A woonboulevard is a house/living street found in the area of any city outside the centrum, with bigger cities having more than one, where you will find furniture stores, kitchen and bathroom stores for building/remodeling, a lighting store, sometimes an electronics store, and even fewer times other types of stores. These, along with the home improvement stores, a few supermarkets, and some sporting stores, are the only stores open on these 2nd days so Nederlands flock to them. In fact, after the 2nd Christmas day there is so much traffic into Ikea's they have to close the streets off. At the Easter time, zoo's and other attractions are open and since it was a beautiful day, lots of people went in those directions so it wasn't as busy at the woonboulevard.

We are looking for a new sofa so we went to a furniture store (De Zuider Ster). We found a sofa we like but as any good Netherlander, Arjan will still think about it more before deciding to buy it. Then we went next door to Ikea to have lunch and look a bit. We did find a new umbrella holder that we needed for only 5 Euro, a real bargain compared to other prices we'd seen.

It was such a nice day and still early in the afternoon so on the way home Arjan suggested we go on a bike ride when we got home. (Yes, I am being teased by my sweet Dutch "country leader", for one of my secret shopping companies, for doing such typical Nederlands things. No wonder I came out "Dutch to the Bone" on Facebook's "How Dutch are you?" quiz!)

Here are some pictures from our fietstocht:

First we rode over to Katendrecht to see the SS Rotterdam. This was the original SS Roterdam for the America Holland Line and was brought back to remain permanently in this place. A housing corporation took control of it and it will be opening in less than 100 days. It will house a hotel, restaurants, and conference rooms, think some other things as well. Now it has a big fence around it with lots of work still being done so you can't get too close.

Here's Arjan telling me something about the ship, and you can see some of the beauty from Katendrecht:

We then rode over to Noordereiland...North Island. It's name comes from the digging of the North Haven between 1868 and 1876 that created this island. Here we stopped to enjoy the scenery at one end, the Antwerpse Hoofd:

The yellow structure on the other side is a main ship radar/ship traffic control.


We saw a container ship passing.



Then we biked over to the other end of the island, Prinsen Hoofd, that faces the Erasmusburg.



There were lots of people out enjoying the day, even if it was a bit hazy. There were other bikers and here where some people taking a break from motorcycling:

There were a lot of people on the Spido, the boat that gives a tour and tells about the Port of Rotterdam and it's importance in shipping.

By this time it was close to 4 so we biked home a different way and who of all people did we meet up with on the bike path at a traffic light the last bit of our ride, the only others at the light with us? Arjan's youngest neef , his vrouw , and their 1 jaar dochter also on their way home from a fietstocht. Unfortunately the baby was asleep but it was so cute to see her sleeping in her seat in front of her mother.