In it are many happy touches of description:-- Before me lie dark waters In broad canals and deep, Whereon the silver moonbeams Sleep, restless in their sleep; A sort of vulgar Venice Reminds me where I am; Yes, yes, you are in England, And I'm at Rotterdam.
Tall houses with quaint gables, Where frequent windows shine, And quays that lead to bridges, And trees in formal line, And masts of spicy vessels From western Surinam, All tell me you're in England, But I'm in Rotterdam.
With headquarters at Rotterdam one may make certain small journeys into the neighbourhood--to Dordrecht by river, to Delft by canal, to Gouda by canal; or one may take longer voyages, even to Cologne if one wishes.

But I do not recommend it as a city to linger in.

Better than Rotterdam's large hotels are, I think, the smaller, humbler and more Dutch inns of the less commercial towns.

This indeed is the case all over Holland: the plain Dutch inn of the neighbouring small town is pleasanter than the large hotels of the city; and, as I have remarked in the chapter on Amsterdam, the distances are so short, and the trains so numerous, that one suffers no inconvenience from staying in the smaller places.
Gouda (pronounced Howda) it is well to visit from Rotterdam, for it has not enough to repay a sojourn in its midst.

It has a Groote Kerk and a pretty isolated white stadhuis.