Foto’s

From above (Or: View of the Grote Marktstraat)

Posted on August 12, 2025 by Niki

Here’s a view of the Grote Marktstraat from the second floor of Uniqlo:

Interestingly, if I held my camera just a bit higher, everything got a brownish tint to it. It looks cool, even if it wasn’t the true colors at the time.

The building on the right side of the photo is Bijenkorf (literally: Beehive). If you’re ever there, take the stairs! That way you can see the impressive stained glass windows – see also this Reddit post.

It’s hard to imagine this street used to be a normal street with buses and trams running down it! See also this post in Dutch from indebuurt.nl.

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Bee bold, write (Or: Designs at P.W. Akkerman)

Posted on July 9, 2025 by Niki

There is a fountain pen store in De Passage, a covered shopping area called P.W. Akkerman. Their latest campaign is “Bee bold. Write.”, complete with eye-catching bee and beehive designs.

I took it looked cute, and it worked well with the yellow color underneath (I can’t remember if it is usually yellow or not. I’ll have to check again the display is removed.)

I personally have not been inside but I know it is a great store. Two of my coworkers were gifted fountain fens when they left the company, and I only heard praise for P.W. Akkerman when they opened the gifts.

Random news article from dutchnews.nl: Beautiful addiction: art meets taxidermy in new Amsterdam museum. The museum is called Art Zo and is about a 20 minute walk from Amsterdam Central Station. Have a look at the website if you will be visiting Amsterdam.

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Colorful graffiti (And: Sizzling temperatures)

Posted on July 1, 2025 by Niki

Last week Marco and I had Friday off so we were exploring Binkhorst, an industrial part of The Hague a bit more to the south of the city centre. I managed to find some graffiti. First, some frogs!

I also found graffiti of a woman’s face. It was quite striking, although my preference goes to the frogs since it was so unexpected.

The woman looks like she could be an evil villain, like Harley Quinn or a younger version of Cruella De Vil.

At some point we had to cross the canal. The best way to do that was over a very steep bridge. Steep because each step was quite narrow, too narrow to fit my (already tiny) feet on without hanging over the edge. Here’s a link to the Google Maps image but you won’t be able to see well how steep each step is. Like most Dutch bridges, it comes with a groove on each side for you to more easily transport your bike across. It did the job, though. We got across. And Marco was a gentleman and went before me to catch me if I fell! (Or at least we would fall together. Haha.)

In other news, the Netherlands sizzled like a pair of eggs in an overcooked frying pan today. The Hague got to around 35C (95F) at the worst point. To be fair, we only had a few days of really high temperatures. Things are already supposed to cool off tomorrow as the wind changes and a storm rolls in. Hopefully with some thunder and lightning…

Here’s an article from regio15.nl in Dutch about how the weather was so hot today, the tram rails started shooting upwards (!). There were also a lot of issues with bridges getting stuck and not opening due to the heat. There’s also a live blog about the weather over at NOS, one of the public broadcasters in the Netherlands.

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Construction in the city centre (Or: Different road signs)

Posted on June 25, 2025 by Niki

You know you are in The Hague’s Chinatown when even the road signs are translated into Chinese:

I’m assuming it says what the sign in Dutch says – that the street is closed off. Technically The Hague’s Chinatown is the biggest in the country but it is still effectively one long street, or maybe two at most. Nothing like the Chinatowns in other countries.

In other news, the two day NATO summit has just ended in The Hague. The most important thing I have learned while being required to work from home is that eventually, the sounds of the helicopters flying overhead start to sound like background noise. Mostly…

But it was a much larger event than the 2014 nuclear summit (when we also had to work from home). This time there were a lot more road closures, including of highways between Schiphol Airport and The Hague. The main road next to the World Forum, where the event took place, has been closed for more than two months because they needed to build temporary buildings on top of the road to house all of the delegations and journalists. The government recommended that anyone in the Randstad area (The Hague, Amsterdam, Utrecht and Rotterdam) work from home this entire week. Extinction Rebellion took advantage and decided to demonstrate again. You get the idea…

But somehow, nothing crazy happened and everyone is on the way back home. So that’s good.

Hopefully tomorrow is a return to normalcy! (Mostly.)

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A moment of quiet (Or: Just off the main road)

Posted on June 18, 2025 by Niki

Here’s a look a photo I took earlier this week:

Don’t you just wonder how it looks around the corner?

Please note that I took this photo from the public sidewalk. The gate is usually open but it is still private property after all!

Interestingly enough I first thought it was a hofje until I did a bit of research. Marco joked that I thought that because there really are so many of them in The Hague (see also Dutch Wikipedia). A hofje is a small, enclosed courtyard surrounded by houses. These areas were originally built to provide housing for elderly women and often funded by wealthy benefactors as a charitable act. They date back to the Middle Ages and can still be found in many Dutch cities, especially Haarlem and Leiden.

The Gilde Den Haag offers tours of hofjes every Tuesday and Thursday morning, although those are in Dutch. You can also see some hofjes on Open Monument day in September (also known as Heritage Days in English). In fact, there’s a lot of places that open their doors to visitors on that day.

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Flowers and trees (Or: Random photos from around The Hague)

Posted on April 30, 2025 by Niki

Check out these pretty flowers along the Vondelstraat, a street not far from the city centre:

This street is on the way to Kelly’s Expat Shopping, a decent store for expat foods (British and American, with a bit of Mexican as well).

And the photo above was taken just outside of the Paleistuin (Palace gardens). The gardens are freely accessible during the day, and I’ve taken many pictures of it from the inside. This time I figured I would take a picture of the path that runs just outside of it. It’s actually a nice place to walk, except for the bits where the stones are coming up due to the trees pushing them up. You can’t really see that in the photo above, though.

First official summer day arrives in the Netherlands earlier than usual, topping 25°C from nltimes.nl. Of course, the official temperature comes from a town called “De Bilt” closer to the middle of the Netherlands. We got to about 22C here in The Hague, around 72F.

And of course if you have sudden warm temperatures, you also need to have this article: Open water still too cold for swimming despite warm weather, rescue organization says, also from nltimes.nl. You know a lot of people will try!

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Spring arrives in the Netherlands (Or: The flowers are waking up)

Posted on March 12, 2025 by Niki

Last weekend we had gorgeous weather in the Netherlands. The temperatures were around 17C/62F, give or take, with lots of sun to go around. Dutchies were out en masse at every available restaurant terrace with sun.

The flowers also responded immediately. Here is a look at the flowers in Huijgenspark, a park not far from the Holland Spoor train station:

Here’s a look at the basketball court in the morning sun. The tree trunks always catch my eye.

And here is a close up of the flowers:

As you can see, some have blossomed already, with more to come. Last weekend was so nice!

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Pink (Or: A different tree in De Passage)

Posted on February 17, 2025 by Niki

De Passage (a covered shopping area) has a tree in the center, where the Christmas tree usually stands. A few weeks ago a tree with pink leaves appeared.

It is fake, of course, but still pretty. Since it is in the center, you can see it from far away no matter how you enter De Passage.

In other news… today it was -3C (about 27F). That is actually pretty cold for the Netherlands these days. 

Ice rinks open in multiple places in Netherlands after freezing night from nltimes.nl. It is an artificial ice rink, created by spraying many layers of water and letting them freeze overnight.

Dutch skaters out in force to enjoy the ice – before it melts from dutchnews.nl

We will have another day or two of cold before the weather freakishly jumps up to a high of 15C (60F) on Friday. I am sure all of the terraces will be overflowing with sun-starved Dutchies then.

Now that’s a mental image for you!

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The Hague skyline at sunrise (Or: Blues and oranges)

Posted on February 5, 2025 by Niki

Check out the photo I took this morning of a lovely sunrise behind the skyline of The Hague.

It was a nice start to the morning!

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Chinese New Year in The Hague (Or: 2025 edition)

Posted on February 1, 2025 by Niki

The Hague celebrated Chinese New Year today in the city centre. This holiday is always celebrated on a Saturday in The Hague, although Chinese New Year was on Wednesday this year.

We are now in the year of the snake, in case you’re wondering.

I was in the area this morning while they were setting up for the event. Here is a photo of the rooster:

Here is the snake (the star of the show this year!):

Here is a photo of the rabbit, with the Nieuwe Kerk (new church) in the background:

As you can probably see from the photos, it was a very sunny day (one of the few sunny days this month). And finally, here is a photo of what I think is a dog…:

And in other news, Dutch supermarkets want to print labels in English to combat rising prices from nltimes.nl. The supermarkets argue that the Netherlands labels could be accessed via a QR code. I don’t think I agree with this one. English is indeed everywhere in this country, especially in the larger cities. However not everyone can speak it, especially the older generation. The local expat store, Kelly’s Expat Shopping, posts signs saying Dutch labels are available on request, but their target market is obviously English speaking.

It will be interesting to see what happens with this one.

Categories: Holidays, The Hague | Tags: , | Leave a comment

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