Two different towers (And: A waiting seagull?)

A few weeks ago I took this photo of the Ridderzaal in the Binnenhof:

I believe this was the day Marco and I went for a walk and stopped briefly to bask in the sun. The clouds definitely caught my eye. But I didn’t notice until today that the Ridderzaal’s left tower looks slightly different than the right tower. Hmm. But maybe it was always that way? At least it looks to be that way since before World War I – check out this postcard on the Wikipedia article page. Also cool: back then the tram rode right along the building, on the left side of my photo above.

The Ridderzaal was built in the 13th century. It’s crazy to get random reminders about how old European countries are compared to the US. And what photo wouldn’t be complete with a few folks eating and a seagull patiently waiting hoping for some handouts (left side by the bench)?

In other news, I did venture out to the city centre today for some quick clothes shopping. I went to C&A to look at jeans. For the most part it felt almost normal after I walked in, which is undoubtably a good feeling to have. Yes, I patiently waited in line for some hand sanitizer. I say patiently because a few kids in a family ahead of me wanted to go back for more after starting to walk away…

But sure, you carefully dodge around other customers to stay in your own ‘zone’. I did manage to find a nice basic blue t-shirt which will replace one of my old ones nicely. But when I went to look at the jeans I noticed that there was no easy way to get to that part of the store – the fitting rooms were right next to that area, and the line waiting for the fitting rooms was about 8 people deep. No joke.

But I couldn’t go around them at the end of the line because the end of the line was right up against the checkout area, so there was literally no room to get around. Sure, I have the choice of cutting through the line but in the end I decided to shrug and come back another day. With the weather so good this holiday weekend (easily in the 70s) I think I should just be glad I have enough shorts for the time being.