Blog 45 – Leiden and The Hague

Another reason we need Aj to help us find things to do

In discussing things to do and places to go around Amsterdam, Aj mentioned that we had to go to the Lakenhal Museum in Leiden, Netherlands; a great building. He suggested we go soon while they still had their special exhibit on the Pilgrims. What? I learned in grade school that the Puritans left England for the New World. They didn’t go to the Netherlands, they went to America. We even ate at the Mayflower Pub https://www.mayflowerpub.co.uk/ in London which is very proud of their small part in the Mayflower story of having been the location the Pilgrims left from.

As the temperature hit 90 degrees here; here where it is never this hot, so there is no air conditioning, it seemed like a good idea to sleep a few nights in an air-conditioned hotel room. The overnight to Utrecht went well, we would double down for two nights. We would stop in Leiden on our way to The Hague which is one of the cities we ‘must’ see while in the Netherlands. But, as I looked at things to do in Leiden in addition to the Lakenhal Museum, there was easily a weekend’s worth of amusements – ah, but there were no open hotel rooms.

So, instead we spent the whole weekend in The Hague. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hague There is easily enough to do there for a weekend too. The Hague is known for its place in world affairs via the Peace Palace and the Court of Justice. It isn’t known for canals, it isn’t known for being cute, it isn’t known for food or shopping; but it does have some of all those things.

We arrived Friday night via the train from Amsterdam Centraal. To guarantee a place with air conditioning, I selected a room in the tallest building; the 30^th floor of The Penthouse at the Hague Tower which is adjacent to one of the three train stations within the central city. Ahh, nice and cool with a view of the city.

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It was from the Penthouse that we walked to the  Mauritshuis (Museum of Dutch Golden Age paintings)  https://www.mauritshuis.nl/nl-nl/ for our early afternoon admission appointment. We passed the Binnenhof, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binnenhof, the parliament building, on our way to the Mauritshuis; but no tours are offered during the Covid restrictions. A couple things of note re: Mauritshuis; there are Rembrandts, Vermeers, and Hals works of art in this museum – the original Girl with a Pearl Earring is here. Secondly, it is almost completely without revision from the original house which became the museum; a huge, beautiful palace. A cloakroom and ticket counter have been added at the base. And, it is named for the owner of the house (huis), Johan Maurits. An accomplished business man of the golden age, the museum was his personal house; but it is noted that his wealth was based on the use of slaves on his Brazilian sugar plantation, diminishing his accomplishments in art, science, and government. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Maurice,_Prince_of_Nassau-Siegen

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Next we walked around the building and over to the Escher in Het Paleis – graphic arts https://www.escherinhetpaleis.nl/ A learning experience for me. I thought all Escher did was pictures of staircases that morphed into each other; setting up the future design of Hogwarts dormitories. But he did more. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M._C._Escher

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After our cultural experiences of the day, it was time to relax. The restaurant at the top of our building, on the 42^nd floor, had just reopened so I booked us a table with a window view. Normally, during the new normal Covid times, we do not eat at indoor restaurants, but this was very social distancing friendly. We had a whole section to ourselves with the restaurant at about 25% capacity: probably bad for them, great for us.

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Next day, it was a hike over to the Kunstmuseum Modern and Contemporary art (Largest collection of Mondrian Art. Lots of Delftware. All in an interesting building from the 1930’s.)  https://www.kunstmuseum.nl/en?q=www.hubeiymcd.cn  A full couple hours of modern art, plus more Delftware.

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On to the Peace Palace Center of Justice funded by Andrew Carnegie. https://www.vredespaleis.nl/ I was really looking forward to this tour, as this is what I think of when I think of The Hague, the Center of Justice. It was more crowded than we have become used to, it was hard to maintain distances with other visitors – annoying. They have an audio tour which accompanies large multimedia presentations on the walls – interesting, but not energizing and slow, slow pokey walking. After half an hour we were ready to see the rest of it; only to learn that that was it. You never get to go in the building. The only actual tours are of the gardens and they are quite limited. We got to see a movie, but I wanted to be in the room where it happened. That didn’t happen.

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It was now late Sunday afternoon, so on we go, back through town, generally heading toward the train station. It was still hot, but not bad in the shade. We turned a corner, staying on the shady side, when we thought we heard live music. That can’t be – no live music during a pandemic, but as we walked closer, we saw exactly what was happening. A barge full of musicians had moored up to a canal-side restaurant. People were still spaced and separated by plexiglass, and the music could be heard for blocks along the water. We took up a spot on the canal and were able to have a nice adult beverage as the Sunday afternoon jazz played on. And then they upped anchor and went to the next restaurant.

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We tried to follow them, but boats are faster than feet, especially since we still needed to pay our bill; we watched them finish their last song at the next location. As they left, the crowd on the canal-side restaurant also left, so we sat down for a quiet dinner on the canal. With that, we felt that we had ‘done The Hague’ and it was time to head back to the train station, back to Amsterdam, back to the un-air-conditioned apartment.

What about Leiden?  We had to put that off for a week and will put off writing about it until blog 46.