Den Haag (The Hague)

Friday 1st April

Today we were off to Den Haag. Last time we were in Holland (10 years ago) we visited Madurodam in Den Haag, so wanted to go back there and see how different it was from how we remember it last time. Madurodam is basically where you can see a birds eye view of the whole of Holland. Everything is exactly 25 times smaller than in real life and the detail on the buildings is very impressive! We walked in and it brought back a lot of memories! I remember at the start last time there was a ship in the water that was on fire and another boat came to put it out, but this time they were doing maintenance and all the water had been drained so we didn't get to see that act! Nevertheless it was very cool to see famous parts of Holland, especially the parts that we had already visited such as Kinderdijk with all the windmills, the euromast and they even had the airport that we landed at (Amsterdam, Schiphol) and the Korean Air plane that we came in! At the airport they had trams and buses that were transporting people around and the moving luggage strips which made it feel very real.
When we waiting for these Malaysian (I think!) people to move so we could have a picture with the windmill, one lady suddenly came up to Naomi and grabbed her and was speaking a different language with the occasional 'photo..you..me'. At first Naomi thought that she wanted her to take a picture of them but then another man had the camera and she realised that the lady wanted a photo with her and the windmill. So Naomi just stood there and smiled not really knowing what was going on! Then one of the other men in the group grabbed me, put his arm around me, said something that I didn't understand and counted ‘one..two..free’, so I just smiled and waited for them to take the picture. He then said ‘fankyou fankyou’ to both of us. I think they thought that me and Naomi were from there and they wanted to have a picture with the locals! Haha we just considered it a compliment!.
At some of the places in Madurodam you can put €10 cents in and then something moves. At one point we put the money in and it was at a theme park so the rollercoaster went off, the rocking ship was rocking and the merry go round was spinning...very cool!
After two hours wandering around in the cold (the coldest we have both been since we have been here!) we had seen basically everything and decided to warm ourselves up by walking to Den Haag Centrum. Only problem was that we didn’t have a map! So we went to a tram stop (because at every tram stop they have a map and it tells you where you are) and figured out our bearings. After 20 minutes of figuring out where we were and what direction we needed to take we were off walking our way to the Centrum. Every time we saw a tram stop we would go to it and look at our progress and also to check if we were on the right track. I think we stopped at about 10 tram stops on the way to see where we were! We must have looked like complete tourists! But it was the only way we could navigate because we didn’t have a map.
Just before the Centrum we looked at the Dutch Parliament buildings ‘Het Binnenhof’. This has been the centre of the government of the Netherlands for centuries. We walked in and looked at all the old fashioned buildings but just missed the last tour as it was getting quite late in the day. We had a quick look at the shops and then we went to the Central Station to catch a train back to Rotterdam. We were trying to get a ticket which was proving difficult and then a guy came up to us and gave us a free ticket to Rotterdam! That saved us €4.30. I figured we must have looked like very confused tourists for him to give us that. We had a good day in Den Haag but would definitely like to come back and look at some more things.
Leah x