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Den Haag & Delft Day trip 16th Feb
We were up early for breakfast then made the 40 minute walk to the train station. The train journey to Den Haag only took about 30 minutes. We arrived to absolutely thick and heavy snow. We could barely see 5 meters in front of us. After collecting our free map from the tourist office (And looking at the brand new Chinatown gates, which were heavily recommended by the proud tourism office lady) we strolled through the vacant city streets of Den Haag.
We made our way to the Palace Gardens, which were heavily covered in the still falling snow. We found a small children's playground to which I asked Dan to climb to the top of the small hill so I could take a photo of him at the top of the slide. He claimed it was too covered in snow and slippery to be done. Now, if someone tells me that something is impossible, I have to make sure that it is definitely not possible. 3 steps up the small snow covered mound, and I was on my back in the snow. Dan managed to take some photos in between the laughing and the 'I told you so's'.
From the Palace gardens we set off for the UN Peace and Justice Courts. The proud tourism lady said that they were just off the map but gave us some vague directions as to how to find it. Vague directions + Us = Getting lost. We walked for what seemed hours, until we were both busting to use the toilet. Eventually, Dan spotted an Australian flag across the road. Even though we were still busting for the loo, we decided to go check it out. It turned out to be the Aussie Embassy. I was so very close to going in and asking if they could help two of their own in a time of need by letting us use their toilets. I chickened out in the end. We concluded by thinking that because we'd found a few embassies we must be getting close to this fancy UN peace building. We did eventually find this massive old beautiful building, just around the block. Dan couldn't hold it any longer though, and ended up urinating next to the security building for the UN (Not to mention just beside a major road.) I had to walk off in embarrassment.We admired the 'peace flame' and all the stones from across the world which made up the monument.
We didn't hang around too long, as I was still bursting to go to the toilet. We did a quick march along a busy street until we found what I thought was a tourism shop, turned out to be a museum. The nice lady working there must've felt sorry for me when I asked where the nearest toilet was, and she let me use theirs. I ended up having to walk through half of the exhibition to be able the toilet. It was some arty farty communications museum, which didn't interest me anyhow.
We ended up strolling the streets and stumbling across the Dutch Royal Palace. It was nice and modest; Nothing too extravagant like the French, or dull like the English.
Next we found the Dutch Parliament. A collection of beautiful buildings set around a large courtyard. In my extensive readings, I've found that Den Haag is only one of three cities in the world where the parliament is held, but it is not the capital city of the respective country.
We grabbed a quick KFC lunch and headed for the train station. We had to pass the monstrous white and glass construction, which is 'city hall'. We jumped on a train for about 10 minutes and found ourselves in the beautiful little city of Delft.
Delft is a small city, filled with beautiful canals and buildings (not dissimilar to those in Amsterdam), but it is more known for its 'Delftware'. Hand painted porcelain works in blue and white. We spent quite a period of time looking in all the Royal Delftware shops and deciding the even the smallest pieces would blow the budget significantly.
We followed a recommended walking guide from one of our guide books. It took us pretty little streets and past beautiful churches. Dan did manage to get sidetracked off the route by the sound of marching music. We deviated to find 2 large groups of people all dressed up walking up either side of a canal. They were a mixed bag of people, most over 40, wearing colourful wigs and costumes, most enjoying a beer and playing fun music whilst dancing up the street. We guessed that it was part of the Carnival celebrations that we found at the same time last year in Spain.
We finished the walk and I had made the decision that we had to go to find a windmill that we'd seen on the train as we were making our way into Delft. After walking halfway back to Den Haag, we located the stupid windmill (Which wasn't even working anyway) took our photos and headed back towards Delft. At the train station we walked back past the bikes, which took our amazement when we first arrived in Delft. This bicycle compound must've held at least 5,000 bikes. We watched on as there were a few people walking up and down trying to relocate their bikes.
The train journey back to Amsterdam was quite pleasant and relaxing after a very long day of just wandering the streets of two beautiful towns. We grabbed ourselves a kebab for dinner on our walk back up to the hotel from the train station. It was into bed as I was a very worn out little Possum!
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