Hallo Den Haag!
i’m so excited to start blogging about our netherlands trip! it’s going to take a while though, so please bare with me! this was mine and riley’s first international trip together and my first time leaving north america! i was anxious and didn’t know what to expect. the main reason we chose the netherlands was because my aunt, uncle, and cousin just moved back there for the next seven years! which meant we could stay with them and we got the best tour guides! a little selfish, i know ;) we took the red eye direct to amsterdam. that meant that we had to jump right into exploring when we landed so we could start adjusting to the time. it was killer! luckily we were dead tired by bedtime, so we slept like babies through the night.
on our first day, we took it easy at the house and were introduced to a traditional dutch breakfast. that consisted of incredibly soft dutch meats and cheeses on yummy rolls along with fresh mint tea. we had this every morning in holland, and have had it everyday since coming home too! it was seriously so good and fresh! after breakfast, we hit the town and went into downtown the hague. it was a gorgeous sunny day to walk around the centrum. at De Passage (the oldest mall in the netherlands), we got a taste of european clothing and home stores (including De Bijenkorf, where theses amazing stained glass were!), chocolate, and old world netherlands, all in one place! also our first experience of not knowing where we were supposed to walk haha!
after walking down the cobblestone streets past the Noordeinde Palace (the white and red building above-still a working palace), we visited the Mauritshuis museum. It’s just a small museum with some amazing dutch art, including the goldfinch and the girl with the pearl earring!! i was not expecting to see her on this trip so it was such a fun surprise! ( i know my photos are terrible as they were taken with my phone!) i stared at her for a long time but i wish it was still more fresh in my memory! isn’t it crazy how memories fade? even when you’re in the moment, you use all of you power and energy to try to remember that exact moment. sigh. this is why i take a million photos, in an effort to remember at least a little bit of a moment. anyway, this was the perfect museum to do while we were jet legged. it was the perfect size and let us slow down for a bit.
^^^i also loved this giant cow painting. it was so real looking and the light and colors were beautiful!
later, we went to the beach– before researching places for our trip, i had no idea the netherlands was anywhere near the beach haha. like i said, it was a perfectly warm and sunny day so we took little cat naps and talked while finding teeny tiny sand dollars! they were literally the size of a button on your remote control! we had to put our feet in the water so we can say we’ve been in the north sea and the water was ice cold! literally, my entire legs went numb after maybe 3 seconds! that did not feel good ;) that night, we went out to dinner to a indonesian restaurant! it was our first time eating indonesian food and it was delicious! you’ll also notice some mondrian influence in a lot of my photos. the country was celebrating his birthday or something so buildings everywhere added a little touch of mondrian which was fun to spot!
So our first day was tiring but exploring The Hague was so nice and we highly recommend it! As the capital of south holland, there is a lot to see and a lot of history! I hope you’re having a great Friday and weekend so far!