I have been on a 24-hour holiday - my apologies for those of you, I'm sure there are many, who have been checking my blog obsessively waiting for the latest instalment. I know waiting can be hard. Just ask the man in the Lexus ad. (I wonder who is responsible for such a great ad...perhaps my sister & co at Launched. Amsterdam?) It might not be a great ad for those of you who don't speak Dutch, but you'll get the drift.
Anywho - a lot has happened since my last post. Really, heaps! My mum had to train some people in a city called The Hague, where our parliament resides, and our Queen. It's Holland's Canberra, only fun, pretty and close to a beach. And as traffic in Holland can be extremely busy (+ offensive), she often goes to places the night before - otherwise you can be stuck in traffic for hours and hours, which means you have to get up really early. Altogether not fun. And we're all about fun.
So on Monday after dinner, I drove us to The Hague. We have a TomTom (sat nav) who tells us where to go, so we thought it would be a breeze getting to our hotel. The breeze bit stopped once we got into the Hague. There was a set of retractable poles that blocked out way which TomTom wanted as to drive through, but we weren't driving a tank so we couldn't. Good old TomTom had us going round and round and friggin' round in circles, getting tediously close to our hotel (we could almost smell our beds) but we kept ending up at the same damn spot with the retractable poles. In Melbourne (oh, fairly traffic-free, easy-to-navigate Melbourne) you get out your Melways (street directory) and tell TomTom to shut up, and you can still get to where you want to go. Not so here, here if TomTom's WrongWrong, you get StuckStuck! ! In the end we pulled over and called the hotel, who told us to first drive to the central station, and then it should be easy from there. Getting to the station was NOT easy, and by that time (we probably were trying to get to the hotel for about an hour after getting into The Hague) I had had enough and told Mum she could drive.
To illustrate why driving through The Hague was so stressful for me, I have only driven an automatic car in wide-roaded, cyclist-free Australia, until I learnt how to drive a manual car last year. I started driving in Holland for the first time last summer, and I haven't really driven in busy cities with cyclists bloody everywhere, and super narrow one way streets with cyclists + scooters going both ways, as well as trying to change gears and trying to figure out where to go.
After we swapped seats, Mum managed to get us stuck in a lane that was only for trams, DING DING DING, and we quickly jumped the curb to the relative safety of a road for cars. After another bit of road block and driving around we finally, finally made it to the hotel. Hallelujah!
I had decided that while Mum was working, I would entertain myself in The Hague by visiting Madurodam (a super cool miniature city containing many Dutch landmarks) which I had not been to since I was little, hit the beach in seaside town Scheveningen and check out the Escher exhibit in the old Queen-Mother Emma's winter palace. I was also going to be driving through the city with only TomTom (or maybe I should call him DomDom( = DumbDumb in Dutch)) for directions. I made it to Madurodam relatively easy, after ignoring DomDom because I looked at a map first, until I hit, you guessed it, a road block! I knew that I was really close to Madurodam, so I just parked the car in a residential street and walked the rest of the way. I wasn't going to use Madurodam's car park anyway, as it cost 6€ and I am not working at the moment, my Mum has no money, so we're not paying for parking if we can help it. Frugal, yes.
Madurodam was totally awesome! I really, really enjoyed it - I spend 3.5 hours looking around in the freezing cold at tiny little buildings. It was deserted when I got there, apart from the maintenance men/women who were cleaning out some of the water ways (= up to their shins in stinking mud, singing aloud and laughing with each other) and doing up some of the buildings. By the time I left, the weather had gotten sunny and the place was packed out. I really loved how with a push of a button, or sometimes a 10 cent coin, you could make things play music/move. The Mars factory delivered me a tiny mars bar on a tiny truck. A tiny fun fair went off with music and a roller coaster. I was surprised at how much I enjoyed my visit. Check out the history of the place on the website, it was initially developed as a way to raise funds to help students with TB finish their studies, and our queen was the first Mayor of Madurodam at the age of 14. If you're ever in The Hague, it's well worth a visit.
I decided that since by the time I left it was sunny and lunch time, I would try and eat some lunch in Scheveningen. It was the best decision of the day. I drove to Scheveningen, where all parking is paid and limited to 1 hour, so I decided that I would just deal with that. I found myself a heavenly spot at a beach lounge/bar on the beach, the sun had suddenly decided that yes, she would just use all her power to warm us, and I found one of my favourite Dutch foods on the menu: Kwekkeboom kroketten. I just sat there in the sun, I had taken my jacket and scarf off, and lounged. It was absolutely ace! The coffee was totally disgusting, but I just pretended it wasn't. I miss Melbourne coffee! It was a pity I had to get back to the car as my hour was up.
After that, I drove around trying to find the famous Kurhaus hotel. I had seen quite a fancy hotel near where I lunched, which looked suspiciously like what I thought the Kurhaus looked like, but it didn't say anywhere that it was. So after driving around for about 10 minutes, I asked DomDom to take me there. Turns out that yes, the hotel I saw earlier was in fact the Kurhaus. So I decided that I would drive around and find the one street away from the beach with no 'paid parking' signs or parking machines and figured that parking is free there. I walked to the fancy-schmansy Kurhaus hotel and decided that, why the hell not, I would go in and look around. I needed a toilet anyway. I found a fancy-schmancy toilet and shone my shoes since there was a shoe shining machine there anyway. Then I had a good look at the beautiful building and the famous ceiling in the restaurant/main hall. And since it was such lovely weather and I was having such a great day, I agreed that it would be nice to treat myself to a cocktail on the terrace and have myself a decadent old time. However, the terrace was not in use, and cocktails could only be consumed inside. So I decided that I would skip the cocktail. So I just went to the Kurhaus to use the toilet and shine my shoes.
After a stroll through the shopping arcade, I decided I had seen all there was to be seen in Scheveningen and headed back to The Hague to visit the Escher exhibit. DomDom took me there, got me stuck at the same damn spot as in the morning when I tried to get to Madurodam, and took me a very long way round, but I got there. I parked in front of another fancy hotel, Hotel des Indes, couldn't find a parking meter or signs saying I couldn't park there, so I decided I had found another 'free' spot. There were yellow lines along the curb, but I don't know what that means, nor did the lady at the Escher exhibit, so I just decided it was fine. (I am an Australian resident for parking purposes.)
The Escher exhibit was really cool, and so it the building it's in. It's an old winter 'palace' bought by the Queen-Mother in 1896, but really it was just a very big fancy house, very modest for a palace! One of the other cool things there were the chandeliers by Hans van Bentem.
I made it back to where Mum was with the instructions of DomDom, and no road blocks! Then, we agreed that we did not feel like being in traffic for hours on the way home, so we opted to go back to Scheveningen for pancakes by the beach and make the most of the setting sun. I ordered Chocomel with slagroom, (hot chocolate with whipped cream) and a pancake with bacon and cheese. While we enjoyed our dinner we heard on the radio that the free way we were meant to drive home on had a 22km traffic jam on it. We cheered our drinks and decided that we much, much rather sit by the seaside and eat delicious pancakes than sit in the car and hate going nowhere.
Altogether, a very lovely touristy day for me. We got home around 9 pm and were alseep by 10 pm. Now, it's cloudy and gray and cold outside and it will be for the rest of the week. I can't believe my luck that the one day this week that weather is fabulous, I found myself at a beach.
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