You're Paying Me to Do What? Part I

There are some awesome perks to my summer job: being in Holland the main one.

So last Saturday morning at 8:00am Dmitry, Rachael and I left the guesthouse and biked the 10 miles to the train station in Hoogeveen. Made our trains just fine, and arrived in Den Haag around 11:30am. We set off with Dimitry's two year old memories of the city and my guidebook. First stop? Food. We went to Bagels & Beans, a small Dutch chain of bagel/coffee places (think Einsteins but soooo much better.) I got the Tuscany- whole wheat (amazing) bagel with pain cream cheese and minced black olives in olive oil with sun dried tomatoes, pine nuts, and basil. Also got an iced coffee. It was sweet and milky and soo good. Needless to say, lunch was fan-freaking-tastic. As evidenced below.


Then we walked by the Binnenhof, which is the parliament.
It was pretty and all, but the best part of the day was the Escher museum. It's housed in an old palace of the Dutch royalty. Queen Such-and-such wintered there until her death in 19XX. It was a sweet building and the grounds were gorgeous.

And let me tell you, M.C. Escher = genius. We spent 3+ hours there.

Then we went to the beach. The trams were ridiculously crowded, so we ended up not paying for the ride there...oops. There was no convienient place to change into our swim suits so we just walked along the wet sand and enjoyed the cool water. Plus we only had 2 hours before we had to be back in Den Haag.
Here's my traditional jumping photo:

And here's the North Sea!
This is at the more northern expanse of beach- there were a lot less people. It also turns out that this side is a lot more nudist... Yeah, it's striking to look up from the sand and realize there are naked old men walking around. Why is it that the unattractive people are the ones to strip down to their birthday suit? Anyway, up at this end of the beach there are also some old WWII bunkers: Plus, we walked up off the sand and strolled along the cobble stone path that curled among the dunes.
The tide was low when we walked back. Little pools were left behind and this path was revealed: Too perfect, right?

Anyway, we then rode the even more crowded trams back to the city center and met up with Tatiana. She's a masters student at JIVE but lives in Delft, which is just a 10 min train ride from Den Haag. We got dinner in one of the main squares and then went back to Delft. Go figure we got caught in a rain storm, but that didn't stop us from going to a local tavern for some drinks.

So many of you know that I'm not much of a beer drinker back home. I like to try it, but I still don't enjoy it fully. Well let me tell you, this does not apply to Belgian beers. Oh. My. God. This stuff was so freaking amazing! My two favorites were Casteel- a 12% dark beer that tasted like chocolate made by monks and Karmetliet, a flowery light beer made by nuns. We're talking nectar of the gods here people. And the scene was just too picturesque. Sitting in a dark tavern, empty whiskey bottles with stick candles dripping wax on the scarred wooden tables. The old church belfry is the view from the window- I watched it light up as evening turned into night. We met a (drunk) Irish albino. He had white hair and eyebrows and the most heavenly accent.

Finally we walked back home to Tati's flat. It's tiny, and ridiculously expensive, but so perfect. We slept on some extra foam mattresses and woke up to the sound of church bells. Tati took us to the main square in Delft. It has a church at both ends- one where the royal family is married and the other where it's buried. Delft is actually the only city in the Netherlands where prostitution is not legal- it's the royal city. We had a tradition Dutch breakfast in the shadow of the old church in the main square. The poffetjes- small pancakes dripping with butter and powdered sugar- were a-mazing. I had mine with real whipped cream and cherries. Really, it should be called morning desert.Finally, we walked to the train station and headed for Rotterdam for our concert. Tati left for Amsterdam where she was meeting up with some friends to watch the World Cup Final. Along the way, there was too perfect a picture opportunity:

You'll notice the old church is actually significantly titled to the left.