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Rijswick & den Haag
Jul. 20th, 2006 10:41 pmToday was a glorious day.
Yesterday was one of the hottest days of the summer yet. It only reached the mid-90's, but you have to realize that the vast majority of buildings in the Netherlands don't have air conditioning. (Which is, in my opinion, a Good Thing. I grew up without air conditioning. Strategic closing of blinds and opening of windows kept our house just fine. And in Madison I hated have to dress for freezing cold temperatures at work when it was boiling hot and humid outside. So I've been delighted with the lack of air conditioning here.) We're lucky that our office is on the side of the building that's in shade from mid-morning on, and with both windows open it's tends to be the only decent office on the entire floor. But even so, yesterday it was just a little too hot to think. Both Joel and I had fairly unproductive days, in terms of getting things done.
Which made today's excursion all the more nice, because after yesterday, we both felt like we need a break. It's hardly felt like summer vacation, when we still go into the office around 11am and leave around 5:30pm each weekday. But today we had an excuse to ignore work. ( Read more... ) We took the train from Rijswick back to den Haag, and spent the afternoon there. We walked up to the center of the city to the Binnenhof (stopping first to get an icecream cone for him and a popsicle for me, because it was still pretty hot, and we were thirsty. I haven't had a popsicle in a couple of years, and it really hit the spot), where the parliamentary buildings are, and also this awesomely impressive building built in the 16th century (we think) where the Queen makes her formal addresses to the government. We'll have good pictures of everything around there soon. And while we were specifically looking for the Binnenhof, we came upon it rather by suprise. The route from the train station to the center of the city was pretty non-descript; it looked like any other large city, European or not. Then I saw this brick wall, with a little entrance way in it, and through that I could see a golden fountain, so I said "let's go in there!" We did, and there we were! The courtyard, because of the large building to one side, the scalloped enclaves around the inner wall, and the fountain, reminded me tremendously of Saint Mark's Square in Venice - with one exception. There were no pigeons. I remember walking with trepidation in Saint Mark's for fear of stepping on a pigeon, they were so crowded.
We walked all through there, and out the other end, and right there was the Mauritshuis, a museum. ( Read more... )
After that the plan was to go find a place to sit down for awhile, and then continue on sight-seeing, but we were so close to the Grote Kerk that we figured we'd go see that first. We did, and it is VERY grote (big). It's crammed in amongst other buildings, and so it doesn't nearly tower over the city as it must does, but when you finally reach it, it nearly bowls you over. Unfortunately, it's usually closed, so we were only able to take pictures of the outside.
Having done that, we hied ourselves back to a small square which had tables and chairs set out for at least four different restaurants. ( Read more... )
But then the sun set behind the buildings, and the wind picked up and I got cold, so we walked back to the train station, and wended our way home. The only disappointing thing was that on our way up to the Binnenhof, we saw a fascinating church to our left hand side, and we said "oh, that looks neat, we'll have to stop at that on our way back." We took exactly the same route back, except that we were on the other side of the street (i.e., the side on which the church was.) Somehow or other, we completely missed it. I can't imagine how we walked past it, because it was set off from the street a bit and very big, but we did. Oh well. There are plenty of reasons to go back to den Haag (I'm certain we'll go there when mom comes to visit, as there are quite a few more art museums, including one with the biggest collection of Mondrian in the world), and so I'm sure we'll eventually see it, but I still can't figure out how we walked past something so eye-catching.
So it was a glorious day. It was nice to have a break during the middle of the week. It was nice to go and so some more sight-seeing. It was especially nice to be able to just sit for three hours in an outdoor cafe, and not have to worry about anything. I hope we do little excursions like this more often. Joel still hasn't ever been to Leiden, and neither of us have been to Delft or the beach. (I've never seen the ocean, not up close, ever. So I definitely want to go to the beach sometime.)
Now my legs are tired (not so much from the walking, but from the walking combined with not having slept well last night, because it was just Too Hot. Thankfully, it won't be tonight - we'll sleep alot better.), and I've just about caught up on all my email, I think I'm going to head off to bed soon.
Yesterday was one of the hottest days of the summer yet. It only reached the mid-90's, but you have to realize that the vast majority of buildings in the Netherlands don't have air conditioning. (Which is, in my opinion, a Good Thing. I grew up without air conditioning. Strategic closing of blinds and opening of windows kept our house just fine. And in Madison I hated have to dress for freezing cold temperatures at work when it was boiling hot and humid outside. So I've been delighted with the lack of air conditioning here.) We're lucky that our office is on the side of the building that's in shade from mid-morning on, and with both windows open it's tends to be the only decent office on the entire floor. But even so, yesterday it was just a little too hot to think. Both Joel and I had fairly unproductive days, in terms of getting things done.
Which made today's excursion all the more nice, because after yesterday, we both felt like we need a break. It's hardly felt like summer vacation, when we still go into the office around 11am and leave around 5:30pm each weekday. But today we had an excuse to ignore work. ( Read more... ) We took the train from Rijswick back to den Haag, and spent the afternoon there. We walked up to the center of the city to the Binnenhof (stopping first to get an icecream cone for him and a popsicle for me, because it was still pretty hot, and we were thirsty. I haven't had a popsicle in a couple of years, and it really hit the spot), where the parliamentary buildings are, and also this awesomely impressive building built in the 16th century (we think) where the Queen makes her formal addresses to the government. We'll have good pictures of everything around there soon. And while we were specifically looking for the Binnenhof, we came upon it rather by suprise. The route from the train station to the center of the city was pretty non-descript; it looked like any other large city, European or not. Then I saw this brick wall, with a little entrance way in it, and through that I could see a golden fountain, so I said "let's go in there!" We did, and there we were! The courtyard, because of the large building to one side, the scalloped enclaves around the inner wall, and the fountain, reminded me tremendously of Saint Mark's Square in Venice - with one exception. There were no pigeons. I remember walking with trepidation in Saint Mark's for fear of stepping on a pigeon, they were so crowded.
We walked all through there, and out the other end, and right there was the Mauritshuis, a museum. ( Read more... )
After that the plan was to go find a place to sit down for awhile, and then continue on sight-seeing, but we were so close to the Grote Kerk that we figured we'd go see that first. We did, and it is VERY grote (big). It's crammed in amongst other buildings, and so it doesn't nearly tower over the city as it must does, but when you finally reach it, it nearly bowls you over. Unfortunately, it's usually closed, so we were only able to take pictures of the outside.
Having done that, we hied ourselves back to a small square which had tables and chairs set out for at least four different restaurants. ( Read more... )
But then the sun set behind the buildings, and the wind picked up and I got cold, so we walked back to the train station, and wended our way home. The only disappointing thing was that on our way up to the Binnenhof, we saw a fascinating church to our left hand side, and we said "oh, that looks neat, we'll have to stop at that on our way back." We took exactly the same route back, except that we were on the other side of the street (i.e., the side on which the church was.) Somehow or other, we completely missed it. I can't imagine how we walked past it, because it was set off from the street a bit and very big, but we did. Oh well. There are plenty of reasons to go back to den Haag (I'm certain we'll go there when mom comes to visit, as there are quite a few more art museums, including one with the biggest collection of Mondrian in the world), and so I'm sure we'll eventually see it, but I still can't figure out how we walked past something so eye-catching.
So it was a glorious day. It was nice to have a break during the middle of the week. It was nice to go and so some more sight-seeing. It was especially nice to be able to just sit for three hours in an outdoor cafe, and not have to worry about anything. I hope we do little excursions like this more often. Joel still hasn't ever been to Leiden, and neither of us have been to Delft or the beach. (I've never seen the ocean, not up close, ever. So I definitely want to go to the beach sometime.)
Now my legs are tired (not so much from the walking, but from the walking combined with not having slept well last night, because it was just Too Hot. Thankfully, it won't be tonight - we'll sleep alot better.), and I've just about caught up on all my email, I think I'm going to head off to bed soon.
