A day in Den Haag

Our original plan for Sunday had been to quell the heat wave at our spot on the beach. But KPN (Dutch Weather System) showed a 60% chance of thunderstorms when we checked early on Sunday morning. So we decided at the last minute to change our plans to visit the city on Den Haag, rather than it's beach. So we double checked where our museumkarts were valid, packed up the rough guide and hopped on the train. Elena planned our route after breakfast on the train.


We started with a walk through the park near the train station (moderately entertaining). Then headed off into the nice city of Den Haag. We walked through the town and along 'Embassy Row' where we passed Swiss, Spanish, British embassies one after another. They were all quite elegant.
Don't worry, we did find the US embassy...a poured concrete building with double chainlink fences, it's own policie guard booth, and drop down bomb proof door. Not exactly the picture of elegance and quite stood out among the other. Wonder why American's recieve an often mixed reception on foreign soil...


Then it was off to the Dutch State House (unimpressive) and the Palace gardens, nice, but the place was quite 'dutch,' unassuming when compared to images of other royale abodes. Actually, the Queen doesn't live in it, so it was only moderatly guarded and evidently mostly a stop on very price 'royalty' tours of Europe.

In spite of following the 'museum with a toddler recipe.' Two parts running around before lunch, one part long walk following lunch, there was no stroller nap. Elena was wide awake when we arrived at the Parliment building.

So we decided since the Maurishuis was essentially free, no harm in a short visit to the premier collection of Dutch painters. It was a typical Dutch museum, by that I mean, but American standards, it was very small. And old house, with the top two floors (6 small rooms each floor) filled with paintings. No national gallery, where it is nearly impossible to think of seeing everything in a day...Since it is Rembrandt's 300th birthday, they are celebrating with special exhibits all over Holland. We were treated to a lovely viewing of his Self Portrait and an explaination of the restoration. And, of course, the Mauritshuis is the home of the famous, Girl With a Pearl Earring by Vermeer. You can see it on book covers and even on DVD...but the unassuming presentation of the portrait in the museum only highlighted its beauty. I managed to get Elena to pause before it by pointing out the 'blue girl with the orobelle (dutch for earring).' It was, however, a second to the huge cow painting in the hallway. No accounting for taste...

Of course, elena promptly fell asleep on the walk to the train station. I've got mixed feeling about it. One the one hand, a stroller nap would have permitted me the opportunity to listen to the supposedly excellent audiotour of the museum and it's world renown collection. But then elena would have missed seeing the rare Rembrandts and choosing cows over pearl earrings.

We vetoed a roomijs break in Den Haag because we could not be assured of gelato quality. So we detoured on the way home to our Oudegracht standard and enjoyed a cooling break. We were pooped and elena and I spent the evening catching up on some reading while trying to catch the evening breeze.