Last week when I was walking around The Hague I spotted some lovely purple hydrangeas growing on the sidewalk:
Some (most?) parts of the city lack nature and green areas, but the city does let you plant small flowers and gardens along the side of your building as shown above.
Some residents really get into it. Here’s an old photo I posted back in 2024:
The weather has shifted over here in The Netherlands, with rain every day since late Sunday evening. This morning featured some moments of the sky opening up and rain gushing out. Let’s just say it as relatively dry as I was preparing for work. I was starting to wonder if I could get away with walking to work when it started to rain a bit more. So I took the tram. Between the tram and the office entrance (less than 2 minutes walk) my poor rain jacket was getting soaked.
But – we finally have some rain again! This week and next week is just rain, rain, rain… but with cooler temperatures as well. The apartment is finally cooling down a bit. Of course, two weeks of rain won’t help the effects of the drought, but it can at least help.
Here’s more photos of flowers from Marco. This time of a flower by Amare.
and another photo:
In other news:
The Netherlands (and a lot of Europe) is in the middle of a drought. Hopefully we get some rain soon!
Historic drought: rivers reveal hunger stones, warships and mammoth remains from euronews.com
Drought, irrigation bans impact Dutch football; Amateur clubs can’t train on dry fields from nltimes.nl
Video: Zeppelin heading to Utrecht cuts flight short over heat in cockpit also from nltimes.nl (the zeppelin took off from Germany to measure air pollution in the Netherlands last week, but had to cut its flight short due to overheating equipment)
Climate crisis-driven heat ‘sucking soils dry’ as extreme drought hits Europe from theguardian.com
In other news, here is a picture of a butterfly bush (unfortunately without any nearby butterflies), also known as Buddleja davidii.
Marco took some photos of the flowers outside of Amare, a multi-use building for culture, education, music and dance. Of course, my favorite is the one with the tram in the background!
Marco also pointed out that if you look closely you can spot a bee at the bottom of the sunflower. You can also see some benches; this is the perfect place to sit when you don’t mind a bit of sun.
Here’s a photo of some pretty purple flowers, because, well, purple.
We can’t really complain too much this summer. We did have a heat wave in June, but lately it has mostly been temperatures of 25C/77F, although yesterday and today were around 31C/88F.
Tip for those in the Netherlands: there will be a partial solar eclipse (about 90%) on Wednesday, August 12. Article in Dutch.
Last weekend, Marco went to Kelly’s Expat Shopping. Along the way, he snapped a photo of some flowers on Vondelstraat (straat = street).
Back in 2021 I took a photo of a nice, tall sunflower on the same street. While at Kelly’s, Marco got me some Cheerios, yellow mustard and sour cream & chive pretzels. Yum!
The temperatures are rising here in The Netherlands. Europe swelters under deadly ‘Omega’ heatwave, more records expected (Reuters). Things are pretty bad in France, with Paris seeing temperatures of 41C or 105F. Luckily, things will finally begin to cool down in southern Europe later tomorrow and Friday — which of course means the heat is coming our way! We don’t have it as bad as Paris though. Today was 33C/91F in The Hague, with temperatures rising to around 35C/95F Friday here in The Hague.
To give you an idea, it’s currently 28C/82F in the apartment. But, if you aren’t used to air conditioning it really isn’t that bad (except when you’re trying to sleep – that is indeed annoying). Air conditioning still isn’t common in the Netherlands, although it is of course increasing in popularity thanks to summers like this.
Check out the live blog about the weather (in Dutch) at nos.nl.
Recently Marco compared this photo of a lilac bush in The Hague:
Just a bit of spring while we wait for summer. For the longest time we had some decent weather and not much rain, but the last week or so has been rain, rain, rain. We have a few more days of this to go, but it looks like the long holiday weekend (off on Monday for Whit Monday) will feature some nice weather, with highs around 22-24C or 71-75F. For the Netherlands, that’s pretty good! I am looking forward to soaking up some sun myself.
279 flights delayed at Schiphol as security queues, border checks disrupt operations from nltimes.nl
MV Hondius arrives at port of Rotterdam; Hantavirus risk “low” for world population: WHO, also from nltimes.nl
The Japanese Garden at Clingendael is open until June 7 (denhaag.nl)
Last month while visiting Rijswijk I spotted a stork walking around in the grass. I snapped a photo of their adventure (with a good zoom, to not disturb it):
I remembered that I had seen storks in this area before a few years back. Sure enough, I turned around and the nest was in the same place, high up at the top of a building. The area underneath the nest looked cleaner back then, though…
I also spotted some cherry blossom trees:
And a close up:
Very pretty, if you ask me!
If you will be in The Hague at the end of the month, don’t forget The Life I Live festival is soon approaching on Sunday, April 26. This a free event held the day before King’s Day in The Hague’s city centre, with a handful of podiums set up at the Grote Markt, Lange Voorhout, Kerkplein and Plaats. The full program is also available at indebuurt.nl.
Marco and I took a short trip to London last week with the Eurostar train, from Thursday morning through Sunday evening. I’m a big fan of the Eurostar train (formerly Thalys) as it only takes about 3 and a half hours and you arrive in the city centre at the St. Pancras station. Of course, we had to get to Rotterdam first and if you are traveling to London you have to be at the station an hour before your train departs so you can clear security and immigration. So it is more like 4 and a half or 5 hours in total in the end. However, if you’re staying in the EU, like Paris, you only need to arrive about 15-20 minutes before your train leaves.
We lucked out – the weather was definitely on our side. It was about 26C/78F on the day we arrived, with the weather slowly getting colder each day we were there. We only wore a jacket on our last day. The only rain we had was a meager drizzle for two seconds while we exited the hotel and entered the cafe next door for coffee.
One of the days we went to the Design museum to see the Tim Burton exhibition:
The exhibition takes about an hour and is five large rooms. There’s plenty to see in those rooms, though. Note that it is only around until May 26, though it will probably move to a different city later in the year. You can read more about it at the official website.
After the Design museum we took a stroll through Holland Park. Inside the park you have the Dutch gardens:
It was full of absolutely gorgeous flowers. The proof is above!
And also a few statues, strategically placed.
After that we visited the Kyoto garden, also in Holland Park. It was created for the 1992 Japan festival in London.
There was a marble slab of a bridge going across part of the pond which you could walk across, allowing you to get pictures up close.
It was a peaceful place, and gorgeous in the beautiful weather we had.
All in all it was a lovely long weekend, although it is definitely nice to be lazier this weekend!
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!
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!
