The Netherlands got to see a bit of snow today, although it won’t last much longer. It started snowing around 16:00 here in The Hague, but the temperature is expected to increase overnight to 6C/42F. A very quick white world!
Marco took some lovely photos of the snow before it began to melt, though. Check it out.
And here is one of the bridge:
The crunchiest snow was actually on the bridge. So we got to hear the pleasant Crunch! Crunch! Crunch! under our feet when we crossed over it.
Here are some photos from the snow that covered The Hague last week Wednesday. The entire week was quite wintery. Yesterday the low (overnight) temperature was -5C/23F, but to be fair the northern and eastern sides of the Netherlands had it worse, with up to 6 inches of snow last week and -10C/14F elsewhere. But with The Hague being so close to the coast, we don’t see numbers like that.
Wednesday was quite pretty to be out and about, though. If you went early enough, the snow was still fresh, with the gorgeous crunch under your boots. You also didn’t have to worry about ice, since the snow was still too fresh and not pressed down by everyone walking on it.
Above, by The Sting clothing store, not far from the Grote Kerk.
Looking left of the previous image, towards Venestraat, a shopping street (marked by the stork lights).
Cafe seats outside of ‘t Goude Hooft, a restaurant and hotel.
Looking towards the old city hall (the red door is part of it), where Marco and I got married back in September 2013.
By the restaurant By Ami, which coincidentally was advertising for their Burlesque night, which is probably much more mild than you might think, as this is a restaurant after all. But I thought it was a nice juxtaposition to have the snow-covered summery trees next to an advertisement with a woman dancing in what is basically a one piece swimsuit.
No blog post is complete or Dutch enough without a bicycle, and in this case a fully snow-covered one.
Since The Hague is so close to the sea the snow was gone by Thursday. Yesterday was the coldest day of the week, as I mentioned, but today is already back up to 6C/43F, a more normal temperature for a Dutch winter.
In theory this was the last year that fireworks could be purchased for New Year’s Eve in the Netherlands. I say in theory because the government said they were banning it, but they still need to work out compensation for the companies who sell fireworks. But I do expect it will be the last year.
Here’s a look at the aftermath in just one corner of The Hague the day after:
A lot of people don’t clean up after themselves as they expect the city will do it for them…
And, just because I’ll forget to post otherwise, here’s a final picture of the holiday displays by Bijenkorf from a few weeks back:
In other news, we got some snow this weekend! The people setting off fireworks got really lucky because the weather turned on January 1, after the festivities were over. Of course, it is mostly slush here in The Hague. But there are some good pictures out there – check out Reddit for some beautiful pictures someone took today in The Hague.
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…
Marco and I were out shopping in the city centre when we decided to completely upend our dinner plan and go back to Takumi Ramen on the Gedempte Gracht. Silly Niki and Marco…
Even though we went around 14:00 it was still quite full. Luckily the location is pretty big. They even have an outdoor terrace on the Rabbijn Maarsenplein.
This time I went for the Japanese curry meal with karaage (Japanese fried chicken), miso soup and a seaweed & lettuce salad.
And here is a look at a cool poster behind Marco. I thought the purple color went well with the blue wall.
(This is fairly typical. Here’s a look at some wall decorations at the other location in The Hague.)
The lowkey highlight of the weekend was a storm that passed through late last night. We got treated to some thunder and lightning for about 10-15 minutes, which is fairly rare around here. Summer weather is on its way, with temperatures around 80-85F expected this Thursday, with a chance of rain here and there due to that. Bring on the sun!
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.
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.
I’ve blogged about the store Xenos before – the term is Greek for “strange” or “different”. And they do indeed have a lot of different things, which makes it fun to pop into the store every month or so to see what new things have arrived. (Another they do sell certain things for years and years. I broke a coffee cup last year. That wasn’t a problem, since Xenos was still selling the exact same model 5+ years later.)
The latest thing I noticed as peelable gummies.
The actual candy is a square, but you can apparently carefully peel away the outer edges to reveal the animal inside, either a penguin, turtle or dolphin. The mystery is what flavor each is. The bag just says “mixed fruit soda flavor”, so apparently each one is a different flavor like strawberry or lime.
As mentioned in my last post, the oliebollen stand opened yesterday, 1 October. As you can see it was immediately swarmed.
Marco also made good on his promise to go take the picture above and buy oliebollen, so we already had our first ones of the season yesterday evening, with the obligatory coffee.
And yes, it is rainy in the Netherlands of late. I took a chance this morning by not bringing my umbrella on my walk to work. I regretted it around the halfway mark. Boo. It looks like there will be less rain the rest of the week, though.
Here’s a photo I took of the Hofvijver last weekend:
I suspect the area was crowded today. Our summer is apparently two days long: today and tomorrow the temperature is around 28C/82F, before the temperature drops back down to 21C/69F on Sunday.
Did you know there is a live webcam of the beach at Scheveningen available at strandweer.nu? (strandweer = beach weather). Of course the sea itself is still pretty cold, considering the summer hasn’t been overly warm, yet.
Life in the Hague 