April 28, 2024 Day trip to The Hague, The Netherlands

This was our first full day off the ship. We were given a breakfast slot of 7 to 8 a.m. for today at our hotel. We had a 9:06 a.m. train to catch to The Hague. The breakfast buffet was plentiful - pastry, muffins, mini-muffins, cold cuts, cheese, boiled eggs, juices, bread (you toasted it yourself), three kinds of dry cereals and juices, coffee and tea.

The walk to Rotterdam Centraal train station was about six minutes. We gave ourselves plenty of time to find the platform and our train seats. The ride to The Hague took about 30 minutes. Some of the track was rural and the train reached 131 km per hour. Most of the track was in urban areas.

The app with our tour electronic tickets had a feature to put in where you were and it gave a route to follow to arrive at the meeting point. We arrived in The Hague 40 minutes before the meeting time for the walking tour, in case we got lost. It was an address but we could not find street names or numbers that made sense. We were led to the Mauritshuis Museum, but there was no mention the the meeting point was across the street. We did find the guide and were the first of four couples. Our guide’s name was Redjun, who is an architect during the week. The others were from Scotland, Czechia and USA and at least ten years younger than us. The final group member was an older American woman with a cane who walked quite slowly on the brick streets. She left the group after 45 minutes when we had hardly walked 600 meters with several stops for points of interest because she could not keep the pace of our next stop.

We started the tour toward the first house in The Hague, which originally meant the forest. A rich Duke from a nearby town, 800 years ago, decided to build in the forest where he could find quiet. There was a small lake and an island big enough for a grand house. He died before it was completed but his son finished the building and constructing houses for all the servants who looked after the family and its property. The building with its Great Hall or Knights Hall has been the seat of a government since then. There are renovations of the buildings expected to be completed in five years forcing the Dutch Parliament, Binnenhuf, to relocate in the meantime. Binnen means inner and huf means courtyard. This is the political heart of The Hague and The Netherlands since 1650 when the Spanish were defeated and left Holland. The natural lake still exists and is shared with the Mauritshuis Museum

The Mauritshuis Museum was owned by Johan Maurits who made his fortune from sugar and was the governor of the colony of ‘Dutch Brazil’ from 1636-1644. He owned slaves. Now the museum holds the famous Johannes Vermeer painting Girl with the Pearl Earring.

From the lake side of the parliament buildings, the small three story tower became the Dutch Prime Minister’s office in 1924, It had previously been the Gardener’s storage shed. The parliament buildings are the oldest in the world that have been in use for over 800 years.

We proceeded to another area a short distance from the lake, it was the edge of the village at the beginning of 18th century before colonists returned to the Netherlands. All along the street there were planters with tulips in full bloom. The square had Queen Beatrice’s palace among other stately houses. She gave the palace to the city is 1984 with the stipulation that it be used for culture. It now is the home of the Escher Art Museum. Not far from the palace was the American Embassy until seven years ago when the embassy moved to a new location with better security. French protestant Huguenots fled to the Hague in the 17th century from France to escape violence toward them. A rich Huguenot had Louis XIV’s architect design Huguenot Huis, built between 1711 to 1715. This established a trend with the wealthy Dutch for French style houses that line the square, which is covered in crushed sea shells. The reason for the crushed shells was because the pages in training to become knights were housed in one of the few Dutch style houses on the street. Each morning they practiced their horse riding skills. Once guns became common, pages were no longer needed since knights learned to fight in the new way. The page’s house is the only Dutch style red brick house on the street. There was a curious narrow house which was just 1.8 meters wide.

We walked to St. George’s church where at the top of the tower is the symbol of The Hague. A stork standing on one leg with an eel in its beak. The eel represents the fishing heritage of the Hague village. Across the street were two former City Hall buildings, one was the Dutch style oldest City Hall beside it the next oldest French style City Hall.

Next we were taken, along a narrow street which had a gigantic mural of cute playful cats, to the oldest shopping mall in Europe, which was built in the French style in 1884 and named De Passage. It has some high end retailers as tenants. On the way back to the lake we walked through a rebuilt plaza that had some houses built to look old and some modern. The final stop was in front of the statue of Johan van Oldenbarnevelt who was a statesman and inventor who adapted windmill power to assist in woodworking. It helped make ships for the 16th century Dutch monarchy. The tour ended and we checked the canal tour app for a route to the starting point while looking for a place to eat some lunch. Step count was 9,228.

We found Dudok Café and Brassiere. We were in and out in 30 minutes and found the canal tour office much easier than this morning’s tour. The wind was still quite strong. There were two tours heading out, a Dutch speaking boat and an English speaking boat. There are 32 bridges on the route, many that we ducked to make sure we didn’t hit our heads on the bridge. The canal system surrounded the old village go the Hague. There was a cast iron bridge from 1885. There were lift bridges. We floated on parts of the canal that just recently had been open. Parts of the canal had previously been parking lots created by building a platform over the canal. Now a car elevator takes cars to a parking lot for 140 cars under the canal. There was a brick building where candy was manufactured including candy bracelets that were invented there.

Before1850, since The Hague was only a village, it could not have walls around it nor could the people brew beer, which could be taxed for local revenue. They could brew a weak beer that even children could drink, because the water was badly polluted. The village was divided by class and still is, with the rich people building on the sand dunes, which created curves in the streets. The poorer people lived across the canal in the peat area and had no sewers or water system. Their wells were polluted so their drinking water was unsafe. After 1900 construction laws changed and sewers and better sanitation practices began in the peat area.

The tower with the stork top above its weathervane that we saw this morning was beside St. George’s church, but our canal guide, Hennie, explained that the tower is not part of the church. We passed the Royal stables where the king keeps his horses and from where annually on the third Wednesday in September coaches and horses parade to Binnehof for the ceremony to present the government’s budget. There was a digital thermometer that read 14°C, but the wind made it seem colder. At a corner we passed a Russian Orthodox monastery, which in the past year has broken with the Russian church due the the war in Ukraine. Next we floated past the back of the Escher Art Museum which in the days of Queen Beatrice it was the stable entrance. Then another turn in the canal and modern buildings appeared. They were located near The Hague’s central train station and housed some of the government departments. We were almost at the end of the 90 minute canal ride.

A bit chilled, we walked the one kilometre to the train station and bought some hot chocolate at Julia’s. It was different. We were presented with a cup of hot frothed white milk with a wooden stir stick in it. When the stir stick was pulled out it was attached to chocolate the size of a large marshmallow. We just stirred until the chocolate was melted. It was great hot chocolate. We only had a 20 minute wait for the next station back to Rotterdam.

Redjun had mentioned that the Indonesian restaurants in the Netherlands had the best food. We googled one near our hotel and found the closest was by the train station. We followed the directions which said to go through the train station. You can’t do that. Then we saw a road and a tunnel under the tracks. On the other side there was no Indonesian restaurant is sight. However, at a corner of a park was a döner kebab restaurant called Konak with a short line. We ordered chicken döner wraps and found seats in the small restaurant. The wraps were generous proportions. We walked back to the hotel tired after a long day.

Total steps 19,585