Last Wednesday I went out for dinner and cocktails with a friend of mine. We went to Milu, a restaurant in the centre of The Hague near the Grote Kerk (literally “the big church”). It was my second time visiting – the first time was with coworkers. The restaurant’s premise is sharing dishes; we ended up having three “rounds” of food and drink.
Round #1:
Bruschetta bread and beef teriyaki with Chinese pancakes. With a green tea mojito for me.
A few weeks ago Marco and I visited Tabletop Kingdom, a store for board games, card games and similar. I saw a cool display:
That’s right – a special Monopoly edition for The Hague!
At the website for Paagman you can see an overhead view of the board as one of the product images. The railroad cards are replaced by important HTM stops (e.g. halte Spui and Halte Centraal). What I do like is that recent photos are used – for example, “Spui” has a photo of the city hall with the Mondriaan colors added earlier in the year. Or that there is a spot for the Pier at Scheveningen, with the relatively new Ferris wheel.
Rrrollend Foodtruck festival returned to the Malieveld this weekend.
Last year I went with Roll or bowl, whereas this year I went Indian, having chicken curry with rice at Indian Roast.
Work is insanely busy these days! But here is a photo of:
That’s right – guess who got an ice cream machine for his birthday! Lekker!
At the end of June Marco and I went to the Haagse Wereld Hapjes food festival at the Lange Voorhout. That translates to something like ‘Bites of the world, from The Hague’. It featured 25 different restaurants based in The Hague or surrounding area, with cuisines ranging from Persian to Argentinian to Slovakian.
The one restaurant that caught my eye was Pops, an American restaurant over in nearby Wassenaar. They really outdid themselves with their decorations:
A look at the overall area:
And, of course – you need entertainment with your food:
It was a fun experience and a great initiative by the city!
Friday night after work Marco made homemade pizza. With three types of paprika (bell peppers), onions, two types of cheese and jalapeños. On the left side you have sun-dried tomatoes while on the right side you have ham. Lekker!
At the beginning of the month Marco and I went to the Thailand Grand Festival (Dutch) in the Plein. The highlight was definitely the culinary options – more than half of the festival was taken up by food tents. And everything looked so delicious! But they also had music and dance performances as well.
We ended up going only a few minutes after they opened, but it was already pretty busy. I ended up taking photos from a distance because it was so crowded in the area where the festival was happening.
If only the weather today was as good as that day — today it was just rain, rain, rain. And more rain. Welcome to the Netherlands! 🙂 (just kidding)
Continuing my previous past about our first day in Paris, here is what Marco and I saw on day 2 of our lightning trip to Paris:
The Fountain of Innocents
Near the beginning of our walk we unexpectedly came across the Fountain of Innocents (or, at least, it was unexpected for me – perhaps it was part of Marco’s master plan all along!).
My favourite picture – taken from the Tuileries Garden
And then my favourite picture, as we walked through the Tuileries Garden.
And here is a view of the Place de la Concorde. I had to get a photo of the duck! (the piece of wood is to help birds get back out of the water)
In the distance you can see the Luxor Obelisk.
One of the fountains at Place de la Concorde
Place de la Concorde has two fountains dedicated to the maritime industry in France.
Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel
We also walked past Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel (not the Arc de Triomphe everyone thinks of, though).
And my last photo is from the shopping mall near the Louvre, as we were walking back to the train station:
The Inverted Pyramid
The Inverted Pyramid. Made even more famous by the Da Vinci Code… 😉 Although it was already famous!
Marco and I visited Paris last week for about 36 hours — 11:00 Wednesday until 19:30 Thursday. A lightning trip! The reason was to meet up with my brother and sister-in-law who were vacationing in the city. Since they live on the west coast of America, it seemed to be an opportunity one does not pass up. The trip was under three hours by high-speed train (Thalys)…
Marco and I splurged a bit for this trip and traveled first class. One unexpected benefit was the use of the first class lounge at Rotterdam Centraal:
Perks of the lounge: fairly quiet, a free drink, and climate controlled.
Our hotel wasn’t far from the train station in Paris (Gare du Nord) – only about a 15 minute walk. After meeting up with my brother and sister-in-law, we retreated to our hotel room to apply vigorous amounts of sunscreen. And why might we do that, you ask?
Because the temperature for both days while we were there was around 36C (97F). Ughhhh! And in those two days Marco and I managed to walk 38km, or about 23 and a half miles. Don’t worry, the next three days we were extremely lazy and rested our poor aching feet.
First we visited the Louvre museum:
