Hi Steve
I was travelling with my son who is a keen photographer and we left the car at the ferry terminal at North Shields. If, like yourself you live locally then you could arrange a lift or get the DFDS bus from the centre of Newcastle. We booked the onboard buffet dinner and breakfast. To be honest it was ok but seemed a bit pricey for what you were getting. If I go back again I think I'd consider taking my own grub to save a bit of cash.
We'd booked a centrally located tourist class hotel called the Hotel Hegra in Amsterdam online. It was basic but absolutely fine as a base and the price included breakfast.
The train network in Holland is first class and we got the 9.10 to from Amsterdam Central Station that got us to Rotterdam in about an hour. The original plan was to change at Schiedam and go straight to the Hook to do the return trip on the Fast Ferry. I'd worked out the travel schedule from the Dutch railways website but the more I thought about it the more I came to the conclusion that we wouldn't be able to fit everything in during the time we'd available.
The Maritime Museum has a big audio visual presentation called Mainport Live which provides a good orientation to the port and its history.
The river traffic was just incredible and you got a real feel of being in the biggest port in the world. We saw tankships, coasters, tugs at work, vehicle carriers, container feederships, fruit juice tankers and giant container vessels both on the water and alongside during the hour long trip. We also saw ships being repaired in submersible dry docks. To be honest I would have stayed onboard for another trip if they had let me!
DFDS still do mini cruises to Amsterdam. If you did one of these then you could do worse than give the city bus tour a miss and spend the day in IJmuiden which had a number of good vantage points for ship photos.
Cheers
Billy