It is starting to become a tradition for me and my significant other to do a nice little trip over the Easter holidays. My girlfriend is more into nature than cities, which sounds like it might narrow down the list of possible destinations but really doesn’t. Turns out living in the center of Europe makes it possible to reach a wide variety of places and landscapes within reasonable time. One year ago, we went to Saxon Switzerland, the area around Dresden in eastern Germany. Given that this was a more mountainous region, this time we set our eyes on reaching the sea. And, because ever since I visited Rotterdam a couple of years ago I became a fan of the Dutch coastal region, we eventually settled on visiting The Hague in the Netherlands this year.
Neither my girlfriend nor I own a car. But from experience I also knew that taking a train would be taking long, would be cumbersome, and would limit our flexibility when there. That’s why we chose to rent a car from the car sharing service we both are subscribed to. In particular, we opted to take a VW ID.3 pro. I had driven the Cupra Born the also have on offer in the past before and both cars share the same technical foundation. So I didn’t expect there to be much of a difference. In hindsight, I can’t tell if it was just because of familiarity, but I’d say maybe the VW felt a bit “nicer” on the road.
Overall, we were traveling from 10:30 to roughly 18:00 on Friday to get from Karlsruhe to our hotel. However, this included a short stop at my place in Heidelberg and two or three charging stops, one of which we combined with having lunch. We opted to book a somewhat more fancy Hotel (at least for our standards) which was located right at the beach. It even came with a sauna and infinity pool in the top floor. Additionally, we booked the breakfast buffet for all of the 3 days of our stay. The car we left in a close by garage which we paid for upfront. That was around 80€ for the 72 hour tariff. After check-in and settling into our room it was already getting dark outside. So we only did a small stroll along the beach. It was also extremely windy. This can even be seen on the cover foto of this post!
The next day, Saturday, we got up somewhat early and decided to take the tram into the city. Similar to other cities like e.g. London you don’t need to worry about getting a ticket prior to boarding. One can just tap in and out with the credit card using dedicated terminals near the doors. Once we arrived in the city center, we found ourselves near a small market. One of the stalls there was offering freshly hand-made Stroopwafels which we had to try. These were quite amazing!
After exploring the city center a bit more my girlfriend booked us a boat tour over the Grachten. This was, unsurprisingly, an excellent idea. We had a delightful tour guide telling us all kinds of facts about the city and its buildings while we were cruising over the water. Gracht bridges don’t have much clearance so we regularly had to duck in order to not bump our heads against one of them.
By the time the boat tour had completed it was already close to 4pm. Some of the smaller museums we were thinking of visiting were already closing by that time. We still wanted to try our luck at the Mauritshuis, however. While the length of the waiting line ended up a bit off-putting, I did see a former colleague standing in it. What a coincidence! Unfortunately he didn’t see me, but I texted him and we could verify that it really was him.
After having decided that Sunday was going to be our museum day we decided to head back to Scheveningen, the quarter of The Hague at the coast where our hotel was located. There we went top the area around the Kurhaus, the “seaside resort”. My girlfriend had some Kibbeling for dinner while I was having some fries. Afterwards, we also walked down the pier and ended up hopping onto the ferris wheel.
Finally, we made our way back to the hotel after a long walk on the beach where we checked out the spa amenities on the top floor. A beautiful sunset topped off this very much perfect day.
Sunday we again got up rather early for our taste. After another extensive breakfast, we made our way back into the city, noticing that the city was still rather unpopulated. Our first stop was the Mauritshuis which we had already been close to visiting the day before. It’s an old building with a modernized basement turned into a reception hall and three stories filled with 300 year old paintings. While initially I admired the skill with which these artworks had been painted, I grew number the higher up we got during the tour. This was very unfortunate as we only got to see the most famous paintings at the very end. On the bright side, my girlfriend bought me a new pair of socks in the museum merch shop depicting “The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp” by Rembrandt.
Once we were done with the old paintings we continued our way to the Escher museum to get to see some less-old paintings. I really admire his work, both aesthetically as well as from how complex it is. His works were also extended by some information about the palace the museum is housed in. Overall, the size and scope of this museum better matched my limited span of attention.
Unfortunately I started feeling quite ill roughly at the beginning of our visit to the Escher museum. While the symptoms receded after a while (or rather I heroically pushed through them) I was a bit spooked and we decided to cut the day shorter than we initially had intended. We still grabbed a small lunch in the city and got some groceries for later but decided to head back soon afterwards. Dutch people not giving a damn about Sunday or Easter and still opening their shops be praised! Luckily, the weather was great and we could have yet another nice walk on the beach before I ended up laying in bed for the rest of the day.
Finally, on Monday, we had to get back home. But of course not after having one last big breakfast from the buffet and spending just a little extra time near the beach.
What I have left now after an absolutely amazing weekend is some wonderful memories and a cute fridge magnet in the shape of a bicycle - and some small souvenirs from the famous coffee shops they have over there ;)
