Grand hotel Amrâth Kurhaus (Or: 20 minutes from home)

I have never booked a hotel room only a few days before it was needed, but here we are in corona times. Marco and I celebrated wanted to go somewhere for our wedding anniversary this weekend. We booked the days off work at least a month ago but I was a bit hesitant about choosing where we would go thanks to the weird times we live in.

Things got a bit stranger on Wednesday, when they announced that new regional corona measures for The Hague (among other cities) would be coming. In the end the new measures were that cafés and restaurants are required to close by 01:00 in the morning and they would only be able to serve a maximum of 50 people (inside or outside) instead of 100. No mandatory face masks outside of public transportation yet. I’m not sure that will ever come in this country.

But! Back to our anniversary. Since things were a bit dicey we decided to stay in the area; we booked a room at the 5 star (!) Kurhaus hotel in nearby Scheveningen. I’m glad Marco persuaded me to go for that one.

The room itself was unexpectedly modern, but still cool. The view at night was awesome:

The room’s window was double-paned, so we didn’t hear anything from the boulevard unless we opened the window. Speaking of the boulevard, we walked up and down it on Friday and Saturday. You could tell there were less people around, although it might have also been because it was no longer the high season for tourists. At least the restaurant owners on the beach don’t have break down everything for the winter (a one-time rule passed earlier this year to help save costs this year, article in Dutch from omroepwest.nl).

I was also happy with the breakfast. Lots of bread, eggs, bacon, etc. It was a buffet. Due to corona it was strictly “enter at the beginning, go slowly through the whole line, and go back to the beginning if you missed anything”. They had the place roped off to enforce that fairly well.

The only mistake I made was accidentally grabbing a tiny pack of smeerkaas (literally “spreadable cheese”) instead of butter. Ewww. Luckily I had also grabbed a small chocolate spread as well.

We celebrated our anniversary with prosecco at breakfast. And lots of coffee. Yum.

You know you’re in a 5 star hotel when breakfast comes with a piano player, too.

Another highlight: after breakfast we stopped at a beach tent with the name “Zeezicht” (Sea view) for some coffee, and later apple pie. We found a nice quiet couple’s chair and settled in for a few hours of basking in the warm sun. Here was our view:

There was also bungee jumping and a zip line by the Ferris wheel, so we had plenty of entertainment. This trip was quite relaxing – it was really nice to get out of the city for a few days. Sure, there’s still people around you but there’s also more room to move around.