Finishing Up in Amsterdam

After a week in Amsterdam, it was time to move on. I would have liked to stay longer, but as I can only be in the EU for 90 out of every 180 days, it was on to the next place. I wanted to see what the Netherlands was like outside of the more international and touristy capital, and experience modern Dutch life in The Hague. As the administrative center and seat of government for the Netherlands (which is different than the capital, I guess. I don’t really get it either), I was expecting a city dominated by large ornate, government buildings, akin to Canada or the UK’s parliamentary buildings. Which to my surprise, is not what I found.

The Hague felt very modern and urban compared to Amsterdam. Large skyscrapers dominated the skyline as the train pulled into Den Haag Centraal Station. After a brief struggle, figuring out where to catch the metro, a short ride brought me to Grote Market where I would find my next accomodations, The Pink Flamingo Hostel.

The Pink Flamingo sits tucked back off an alley on an otherwise busy plaza, filled with chairs and tables and surrounded by a collection of bars, cafes and street food vendors. At night it came alive, filled with chatter and laughter until the late hours, but for now it was relatively subdued.

As I only had a day and a half to get to know the Hague, I dropped my bags off and headed out to see it.

Unfavorable Impressions

My initial reaction to The Hague was not one of great enthusiasm. Likely for a number of factors, coming off the high of Amsterdam, the deck was stacked against this new city. The hostel’s location also left a lot to be desired. Although the plaza outside the window was charming, the square itself sat at the end of several busy shopping streets, basically an open-air mall. As is to be expected of many city centers, this attracted all sorts of people and offered a more apparent look at the social inequities that pervade city life than had been readily seen in Amsterdam. Finally, it was a travel day. And although the train ride had only been 40 minutes, I know that I always struggle a little more on the days when I don’t yet have my bearings. After all, my first day in Amsterdam had been no picnic either.

I had about 4 hours to kill until I could officially check in at The Pink Flamingo, so I set about wandering aimlessly in my usual way. At the end of the mall, I found The Hague’s central library and had a little poke around. Spread over five floors, the library was everything you expect a library to be. A clean, quiet retreat in the middle of the busy city. It was an excellent atmosphere to help gather myself a little before setting out again. One quirk of note, the books on the shelves throughout the library are incredibly uniform in size and style. I’m used to see a book shelf cluttered with rectangles of all sizes, but here it was like each book fit a mandated standard.

A bit more wandering brought me to Mauritshuis, an art museum with a collection of works by Rembrandt and Vermeer, including the famous Girl with a Pearl Earring. I wouldn’t have time to visit during my brief stay, but it was interesting that such a relatively demure building held some very celebrated works.

Just beyond, I found the Haagse Bos, a large wooded park that stretched for several blocks. Again, I couldn’t avoid a comparison to the parks that I had seen in Amsterdam. Though the park was lovely and quiet, it was missing the liveliness of the Vonderpark or Rembrandtpark.

Finally, the appointed check-in time approached and I headed back to the hostel. Ready to call it an early evening, as I was already exhausted from the day. I was pleasantly surprised to find that I had a six bunk room all to myself for at least a few hours, while I recovered and tried to plan my next day. Eventually, I would be joined by a single roommate for the night, Katie, a fifth year med student from Wales enjoying a brief holiday before school started in the fall.

Turning It Around

Friday morning, after the best sleep that I’d had since I started traveling, I made my plan for the day. I wanted to rent a bike and bike out to the beach about 5km from the city center. I decided that the urban environment wasn’t to my taste, so I wanted to see what things were like further out.

Unfortunately, renting a bike didn’t work out. I’d hoped to use an app based rental service, Donkey Republic (like Lime or Bird), that provided cheap hourly rentals. However, things fell apart as I needed to confirm my phone number via a text message, which currently isn’t working for me (probably something related to the eSIM I’m using). Well, no trouble, I have feet (blistered though they are after the last week) and so I set out walking.

With a rough endpoint in mind, I chose a path that would take me through as much greenery as possible. The Hague shares it narrow streets and generous bike lanes with Amsterdam, but it lacks much of the plant-life on the street that makes its cousin so appealing. Instead, the most prominent feature of the streets are its brick buildings, emblematic of Dutch architecture. The land the Netherlands inhabits is an alluvial plain flowing out to the Atlantic, and sits upon an ancient seabed, so it lacks large deposits of stone, instead subsisting mostly of sand and clay. Thus, stone facades are relatively rare throughout Dutch cities and brick is the primary building material. To the point that many streets are paved using brick.

Along my walk, I began to encounter the government buildings that I had initially expected to populate The Hague. These were some of the first standalone houses that I had seen since I arrived in the Netherlands. These large manors contained foreign embassies, consulates, and ambassador’s residences. Wrapped in wrought iron fences and denoted by flags representing their home nations.

These officials buildings soon gave way to the Scheveningse Bosjes, another large wooded park. Here, I would spend an hour chasing tits through the forest underbrush (see Bird Corner for more). Today, the more subdued nature of Hague’s wooded park felt like a nice reprieve from the city. A chance to move away from the traffic along the boulevards and escape amongst the oak, maple and buckthorn trees, wrapped in ivy and singing with small birds.

Further on, I emerged from the woods into a pleasant seaside community featuring an impressive park, complete with a sports center, playground, small farmyard filled with resident animals, calisthenics park, a community garden, and skatepark. From here, it was only another 10 minutes to the sea.

I had the good fortune to come out on the less busy end of the beach. Just down the way, the beachfront was filled with resort hotels, restaurants, bars and beach clubs replete with lounge chairs and day beds. Making my way down to the water over a clean sand beach, I noted an oddity. Where most beaches I’d experienced would have a band of the seaweed above the water line when the high tide had pushed it up on land, this beach featured flowing rivers of shells. Thousands upon thousands of shells, running in bands and waves stretching over a kilometer of beach.

Also present, were a large number of jellyfish slowly be washed ashore. Portuguese Man of War (or so Google told me) carcasses littered the shore. Capable of giving painful stings, even in death, it required a bit of caution to walk along the shallows to make sure I wasn’t unintentionally walking into or stepping on any trailing tentacles.

The beach was crowded all along its extent. It was a beautiful day and it brought out families, tourists and locals alike, to stroll along or swim amongst the floating jellies. Sandcastles decorated the shoreline, some quite large and impressive. One feature a central pit large enough that the child within was only visible above his shoulders.

Finally, having soaked up my share of sun, I set out back to the hostel. It was an hour long walk, slightly faster than my outbound trip, due to a more straight-line route. This route had the advantage of bringing me past one more sight that I’d hoped to see while I was in The Hague, The International Court of Justice, housed in the Vredespaleis (Peace Palace). Here, finally, was the impressive building reminiscent of the parliamentary buildings that I had expected to find.

With that checked off my list, I returned to the hostel for another quiet evening in. Looking over my photos and chatting with Katie and our new roommate, Sam. Sam — based out of Prague, but originally from Hertfordshire — was heading out early in the morning for a camping trip with some Dutch friends in Austria. All in all, it was a much more pleasant hostel experience than what Amsterdam had offered. And I found that despite my initial impressions, I had begun to warm to The Hague, though I continued not be a fan of the city center.

Bird Corner

My time in the Bosjes of The Hague was delightful in terms of the new birds they offered. Different than the city birds that I had already seen in Amsterdam, these feathery friends were happier among the trees and leaves than the rooftops and plazas.

Here I found Great Tits, Long Tailed Tits (relatives of Canada’s Chickadees), Wood Pigeons, Great Crested Grebes, and, one of my personal favorites, the Great Cormorant.

Where Next?

I’m writing from Rotterdam now, waiting for my clothes to finish up in the dryer. I’ll be here for the next three days and then moving on to Antwerp or Brussels.