Tuesday, May 27, 2014

Day in The Hague

One of Z's cousins lives in The Hague, Netherlands and offered to show us around on our second day. He was a gracious tour guide and had taken the day off work just for us. Den Haag is the third largest city in the Netherlands and is home to the Dutch government. It is also famous for housing the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court. The city also houses most foreign embassies in The Netherlands and during our walking tour we got to see quite a few of the embassies including the Canadian. It is home to over 150 international organizations making it the fourth major centre for the United Nations.

We started off our visit by stopping in at Z's cousin's place. He lives in a rather unique environment....as a side job from his day to day work, he is the caretaker of a mostly vacant former government Ministry office building and gets to live in the building. As caretaker he has access to the entire building and is responsible to make sure no unauthorized people enter the building at night and cause trouble. In turn, he resides in the private office of the former Minister and has a very spacious accommodation.

From there we walked into the city centre and to the parliament buildings. The Prime Minister was out addressing media types. I didn't realize fast enough that this was happening so I didn't get to see him. I did get to see the two guards though. Not a lot of security personnel around during this and the general public was milling around without any restrictions.

The parliament grounds are your typical European architectural awesomeness. The architecture and ornate details are a marvel to see. I never tire of looking at buildings anywhere in Western Europe. The history is also so rich here.

We stopped by the King's working palace, because of course he has more than one and so does not live here. This is the palace where he hosts and entertains guests. We also went to the Peace Palace (also known as the International Court of Justice). We also got to see the former royal palace which is now an art museum.

One of the other things I love when visiting European cities is the city centres and how every restaurant in the centres has large outdoor seating areas. We had a wonderful lunch at Very Italian Pizza, which yes isn't very Dutch, but the food was great and well priced. The outdoor patio was a great environment for lunch. We had great Bavarian beer with our Italian inspired sandwiches.

The weather forecast had called for rain and thankfully it held off for most of our tour. Only as we were ending our lunch did it start spitting a little but not too much to spoil the rest of the day.

It was a great day for a walking tour through a city that we probably would never had that to visit if it hadn't been for Z's cousin's personal tour. The Hague is generally not a city that people visit in the Netherlands; Amsterdam is the most famous for tourists. But I'm very glad we visited here, the city actually has quite a lot to offer in terms of things to see.

Thank you E for taking the time to show us your home town and while I know we had nothing to do with it, congrats again on the good news you received while we visited!!


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