A trip to Den Haag (The Hague)

Some of the space box (the box like weird apartments I live in) buddies decided to go on a day trip to Den Haag. I jumped on the opportunity to visit some places and for a change, do some thing other then the usual Saturday shopping. With some discipline we started pretty early in the morning, 9am..:). As the train chugged its way from Eindhoven, we had some freshly made poha (an Indian breakfast made of flattened rice flakes), that our neighbour was thoughtful enough to make in the morning.

Den Haag is the political capital of the Netherlands, housing the country's parliament and the royal family. We took a tram from the station and headed straight to the beach - Scheveningen. The word " "Scheveningen" was apparently used by the Dutch in WWII as a password. Even the Germans who could speak Dutch easily never quite managed to pronounce it the right way. Never mind, I wouldn't even try typing the right pronunciation. This was my first visit to a beach in the Netherlands and I was excited. Having lived in a coastal city, the ocean evokes beautiful memories in me every time.




Yup! thats me bungy jumping! haha..I wish I could say that. I just watched those brave souls plunging down towards the sea from a far off distance. We lazed on the beach sand for over an hour and soaked in as much sun as we could. After gulping down a Subway sandwich for lunch, we went to SEA.LIFE right at the beach, an aquarium filled with our earthly buddies living underwater. We googled in as much of the scaly, slimy and some brilliantly colored beings as we could.


After downing an ice-cream and doing some on the spot shopping, we moved on to the next stop, Madurodam - a miniaturized version of Netherlands filled with all the important places as small size replicas. The place has a small airport, whistling ships and even trains zipping all across. The coolest thing is that they give you a small booklet with your ticket which has a short description of all these places and where they are. A good guide to refer to later on.

All that is miniaturized

Sadly Eindhoven had just one reference and that too on a fancy building - Evoluon. Come on guys! You should have put up Philips, the pride of Dutch technology!!

The scale of things

Tired, we sat down for some drinks and frites. On our way back, the train randomly decided to take a round about way and came in 2 hours late! But otherwise the trip was simply wonderful. Nobody got lost and nobody lost anything. We were in sync with each other and the weather was at this perfect balance of being sunny and slightly windy . No matter which place you visit, sometimes it comes down to the people you go with, the weather and some luck of course. Ah! we did well..:)