Last week I was walking back from Albert Heijn when I spotted some beautiful flowers. If Google Images reverse lookup is to be believed, it is a camellia flower.
And of course it wouldn’t be a picture in the Netherlands if there wasn’t a bike in it. Ha!
Imagine my confusion this weekend when I snapped this picture, taken on the street which connects The Hague’s Central Station with the city centre:
Either he is about to be eaten alive from behind or that is one big bear. Roger offered a good explanation though: the Kingsfair is now open at the nearby Malieveld. Kingsfair is the carnival to celebrate the upcoming King’s Day holiday on Saturday, April 27.
Hopefully the gentleman didn’t actually drop it on the way home. That thing looks like a dirt magnet!
Recently Marco took some pictures of the tulips by the Spuiplein. The tulips just appeared one day – before that the area was barren all winter!
It’s an appropriate topic considering we had one day of really, really good weather today. It was about 24C/75F. The winds shifted and came from Africa today. But only for one day.
And a look at the area in general:
Orange, pink and just a bit of yellow!
And a look at the raindrops stuck to the flowers:
In case you are interested, Spuiplein is in the middle of a renovation. The next stage will begin this fall. You can read more about it at projecten.denhaag.nl. The article is in Dutch but there are pictures and a Google translate option available.
During the holiday weekend (a four day weekend!) I decided to take a picture of the equestrian statue of Willem the Silent outside of the Paleis Noordeinde. I was drawn by the color of the statue against the gray-white of the building behind it. Unfortunately the sun decided to mostly disappear at that moment.
Here is a Google Maps link on where to find the statue.
In other news:
New species of tiny geckos found in India named after Vincent van Gogh from nltimes.nl
King’s Day in The Hague from denhaag.com in English. This includes the King’s Fair (= carnival) at the Malieveld, opening this Friday and running through Saturday, April 27. There’s even a geranium market on Lange Voorhout on King’s Day!
Route of Tour de France Femmes announced from denhaag.com. The Tour de France femmes will be cycling through The Hague (and Rotterdam) on August 12 this year.
Since 1985, the Netherlands has been sending thousands of flowers to the Vatican for Easter Mass. This year they will be sending over 20,000 flowers. Here’s a tweet of how it looks, although I am not sure if this is an arrangement from 2024 or from an earlier year.
The tradition in 1985 for Titus Brandsma’s beatification. See also: Dutch Flowers Back in St. Peter’s Square in Rome At Easter at seedworld.com. In case you’re wondering, no flowers were sent in 2020 due to the corona crisis. In 2021, even though there were no major gatherings allowed in Italy, roses were sent. That year they decorated the inside of St. Peter’s square with some roses also being sent to retirement homes in Italy. See also: Italy – An Avalanche of Roses to Celebrate Easter. Amusingly that comes from a Dutch government website which publishes agriculture news happening outside of the Netherlands (agroberichtenbuitenland.nl). How specific!
King’s Day is a Dutch holiday on April 27. This year it falls on a Saturday. Annoying for those who don’t get the day off, as it isn’t standard practice in the Netherlands to give an adjacent day off if a holiday falls in the weekend. On the other hand, if the weathers good, you still have all day to party on Saturday.
Oh, and this means The Life I Live – a free music festival held the night before in The Hague’s city centre – falls on a Friday this year. The Hague government donated an extra €50,000 to the festival to keep it it around, on top of the already earmarked €400,000, as a one time (extra) donation. I can’t imagine The Hague or King’s Day without The Life I Live festival. Here are some photos I took back in 2022.
A lot of people dress up in orange for King’s Day (and some also dress up in orange for the festival the night before). Most Dutch stores take advantage of that by offering orange merchandise in the 4–6 weeks leading up to the event. Here is a look at the King’s Day offerings at Xenos:
I also saw some orange tompouce themed t-shirts being sold at Hema. Tompouce (English Wikipedia) is a pastry that is delicious, if extremely sweet and messy to eat. And of course it gets sold with orange frosting for King’s Day!
Have you heard of the fish doorbell? (I think I posted about it at some point.)
There’s a canal in the Dutch city of Utrecht in the middle of the Netherlands. The canal is shared by boats and fish, with a boat lock that opens and closes as needed. But this is also the time of the year that the fish move upstream searching for places to spawn.
What do the fish do if the boat lock is closed? They wait.
What do they wait for? For you to press the doorbell of course!
If you see a fish on the live stream waiting at the door, you can push the doorbell. The page is at: https://visdeurbel.nl/en/the-fish-doorbell/. A bit further down on the page you see a live stream, probably full of murky water and no fish. On the right side there’s a doorbell. If you see a fish, you press the doorbell. This lets a human know they should check and open up the boat lock so the fish can pass through. (Note: if there are more than 950-999 viewers, you’ll see a YouTube stream instead with no doorbell, due to capacity issues.)
The fish doorbell news report – a YouTube channel with weekly news about what fish they saw in the last week and predictions for next week, with subtitles in English.
Nicest photos – a look at some of the nicest photos taken this year.
As a continuation to my last blog post, here is a look at some magnolias in another park in The Hague, this time Huijgenspark. You can read more about the area (in English) at DenHaag.com.
Here is a beautiful close up:
Gorgeous, right?
The area even has its own Little Free Library.
As you might expect, the bench behind it gets vandalized a lot. See also denhaagfm.nl (article in Dutch).
The Zeeheldenkwartier is an area near the centre of The Hague, near Kelly’s Expat shopping. See also Google Maps. I recently took some photos of the star magnolia trees in the area:
You have to be quick with these – the trees have already started to lose some of their leaves. Here’s another look, with a monument to a politician, Hendrik Goeman Borgesius (English Wikipedia) in the foreground.
And finally, some very realistic looking graffiti:
See also this blog post about turtles in the same area, but in August.
Okay, I am exaggerating a bit. But if you were thinking of getting a good picture of the flags at the Hofvijver here in The Hague, thank again. There is currently construction on the tram tracks in front of the area. And that’s ignoring the nearby construction which means the Binnenhof is closed until at least 2028 (dutchnews.nl).
In the meantime visitors can visit the Information centre binnenhof Renovation – see also denhaag.com in English. You can find the information centre at Plaats 22, not far from the Binnenhof (Google Maps).
Life in the Hague 