July 11 - Delft (Day trip to Den Haag)

 July 11 - Delft (Day trip to Den Haag)

Another day-trip today, this time to Den Haag (The Hague).  Only about 8 kms away a tram took us all the way.  In actual fact it took us even further as we’d been given the tip to go to the beach and pier just just past the nation’s capital at Scheveningen.  


However, on arrival it didn’t take us long before deciding that this recommendation probably wasn’t the best we’d ever received, in fact it was quite the opposite!  It turned out that Scheveningen beach, and it’s crappy old pier, is a dump!  With dozens of rubbishy bars and restaurants on the sand, a pier that is so old and tatty it felt unsafe, and then rubbish everywhere, it actually made us laugh it was so bad (the beach even had a ‘pop-up’ Police station on it)

Anyway, moving on,  it didn’t take us long to tram back into the city for a completely different experience at the Mauritshuis, one of the country’s better art museums. This gallery, housing a collection of mostly Dutch ‘Golden Age’ paintings such as Vermeer, Steen, Rembrandt, Hals, etc, is just fantastic and we got to see some original Vermeer’s as well. 

On our travels around town we stopped off at the ‘Peace Palace’, a.k.a. ‘The International Court of Justice’.  This  magnificent building, opened in 1913 and costing $1.5M to build, was paid for by Andrew Carnegie of ‘Carnegie Hall’ fame. Unfortunately we couldn’t go in, “only about 4 times a year” according to one of the guards, but it looks fantastic from the outside. 



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