Den Haag

It has been a while since I have written my last post. It was a busy week, so I really did not find any time to finish my entry-series for the Netherlands. Yes, there is one more post, but this time it is not Amsterdam, it is the Dutch capital: Den Haag.

As I have already mentioned in one one of my older posts, the train ticket to Den Haag Centraal from Amsterdam Sloterdijk station was only €11.20, having bought a Dagretour(“Day-return”) ticket, meaning that we returned to the source station on the same day.

After a short travel by train (45 minutes), we arrived on a quite cloudy day to Den Haag. From there we headed to the nearest information point, which was actually almost in the city center. Actually there are very few information points, compared to Amsterdam: the first sign showing us, that this city is quite different. On the day we arrived there was a great parade for veterans, so the city was really in motion (and we could easily get information&directions from the coordinators of the parade).

Our first target in Den Haag was Madurodam, a miniature city, with most of Hollands’ famous buildings. It is a quite nice place to visit, especially if you’re with children. Nevertheless it is interesting to see as an adult also. The entry ticket is €14.50 (reduced ticket bought from the information point, one € saved 🙂 ). The mini-city is packed with tourists and children and can be very hard to follow the tour of visiting each building in order (there is a total of 198 buildings) and actually until the end of the visit I got quite bored of: got there, see, take picture, move on…

After Madurodam we went out to the sea-side, on tram No. 1 to De Pier. The beach is very nice, it was a great feeling to be on a long, sandy beach after the rocks of Liguria 🙂 … too bad it was cloudy and as we got out, it started to get even foggy. We sat down to a beach-club (open-space) enjoyed a pint of beer and happily concluded that people did not get scared of the not-so-good weather, they rather stayed and enjoyed the beach as much as they could.
Binnenhof
Next stop, back to Den Haag city center. We visited the Dutch Parliament buildings Het Binnenhof, a lovely building from the outside, too bad we couldn’t get in… 🙁 . Anyway it was a nice place to just take a walk at. The lake near it was really beautiful.

So much for Den Haag, and our trip to the Netherlands. I can only advise everyone to visit at least once in their life these lovely places from the “lot-to-do-and-see” city, Amsterdam, to the tranquil and calm Den Haag. There are pictures of Den Haag on my Picasa account.

2 Responses to “Den Haag”

  1. rowena says:

    You certainly covered a lot of ground, and all of your photos are wonderful (especially that one with a huge plate of food!). But the one pic that caught my eye instantaneously was the one with the McDonald sign to the left. They’re everywhere on this earth!

  2. László says:

    Nobody noticed, but I made a mistake, sorry:
    Den Haag is the seat of government, but NOT the capital of the Netherlands…