A few weeks ago I noticed a rather well-formed rainbow in The Hague’s city centre. It was quite prominent and colorful.
Here it is on the Prinsestraat, near the Chinese restaurant Zheng (on the right side, just past Prinsestaete).
Here was the rainbow in the city centre, near Sting, a clothing store. Sting is the building in the middle with the colorful bricks. The building itself received the nickname De Snoeptrommel (or candy jar) years ago. I’m sure you can see why.
It was a good photo, although the tram lines got in the way of the rainbow a bit.
Shortly thereafter, the rainbow was gone. It lasted somewhere around 5 to 10 minutes in total. But it was nice to see!
On the way back, I spotted a cat playing in the dirt on the same street, Zoutmanstraat. Unfortunately it was a bit too distracted to look my way, as it was acting like a dog and rolling around in the dirt. It looked like it was having the time of its life! (Maybe it just had an itch it wanted to scratch, who knows.)
In other news… it is quite touristy, but in September you can ride a swan boat in the Hofvijver (indebuurt.nl, in Dutch).
Or, on Tuesday, September 16 you can visit The Hague to watch the ceremonies around Prinsjesdag. Here’s a description from DenHaag.com: “Prince’s Day (Prinsjesdag) is the traditional start of the parliamentary year for the Senate and House of Representatives in The Hague. On the third Tuesday in September, King Willem-Alexander will deliver the Speech from the Throne in which the government announces its most important plans for the coming year. Prior to the reading of the Speech from the Throne, King Willem-Alexander and Queen Maxima will travel in the Glass Carriage, followed by other important members, with a driving tour from Noordeinde Palace via Lange Voorhout to the place where this year’s speech from the throne will take place.”
Of course, most of the plans are always leaked a few days in advance, so…
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.
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.
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…
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.
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.
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.
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!
Life in the Hague 