Anyway, last weekend, I went on a trip with a group from ESN to Den Haag, or The Hague in English.
Here is a link to a plethora of pictures that I took. I was told people wanted lots of pictures so I obliged...
The Hague: February 11, 2011
The Hague is the political capital of the Netherlands, although the technical capital is Amsterdam. It's never been a big trading city like a lot of the other parts of the Netherlands are so that has really shaped its history and what it has developed into today. The queen of the Netherlands, Queen Beatrix, lives and works in The Hague, so does the prime minister.Here's a castle that was built in 1225 and was later used by Napoleon to house troops...
The parliament and the prime minister work in the buildings that are built around the castle.
It's strange to think how old some of these buildings are. Think about it, this castle was built hundreds of years before Christopher Columbus even sailed. The history we study in the US today is so young compared to how old some of the things you can find in other parts of the world are.
And there's a pond next to it that used to be a part of the moat that surrounded the castle. It was frozen over so we got to go out on it and there were tons of people ice skating all day...
We also went to the Escher Museum, who was a Dutch graphic artist...
There's the Peace Palace in The Hague that's huge and home to the international court of justice.
An interesting tidbit I learned from our tour guide had to do with the statues in the city. It seemed like every other person of importance that was deemed statue-worthy was named William, starting with William of Orange. There was a statue of William of Orange in the center square of the city. It faces south to see incoming threats but was turned to the side for a while when another king lived there and wanted to be able to see face to face with the statue when he looked out his window. Anyway, a lot of these Williams were on horses in their statues. Our tour guide told us that the general rule for statues riding a horse is that if the horse's left front leg is up, then that person died a natural death, and if the horse's right front leg is up, then they were murdered. I don't know how far-reaching this rule is, but I thought it was pretty cool.
That night we also went to Scheveningen which is a sub-district of the city and a famous seaside resort. We were able to watch the sun go down on the sea...
Although the day was freezing cold and I lost feeling in my feet, it was a great day! The Hague was beautiful and I'm really glad that I got to see it. I have to say though, it was still really nice coming back to Groningen because I love it here already and it's starting to feel familiar and like home.
