‘Mit Slagroom’

The Hague.            cape.fool.tornado

Distance.       5km

Total.            1275km

I know that 5km doesn’t count as a cycling day.  We were definitely dodging the showers......and we were successful.  We got up and headed for the Utrecht train station.  All went smoothly and we arrived in The Hague mid morning.  We headed straight for the Hotel which was in the centre and were pleased that they agreed we could store the bikes and put the panniers into the luggage store.

One of the key reasons we wanted to come was so that Janice could see the ‘Girl with the Pearl Earing’ painting by Vermeer.  It is in the Mauritshuis Museum.

The museum was a gorgeous building and contained all the Dutch Masters, including Reubens, Van Dyck, Rembrandt, Holbein and Steen.  

We had a very good look around and had lunch in the cafe.  We had an Apfel Tart, ‘mit Slagroom’, which means with whipped cream.

We only saw a small part of The Hague but we were impressed by the range of grand traditional and modern buildings.  We walked through the Dutch Parliament buildings, The Binnenhof.

The city is also the home to the UN Court of Human Rights and the International Court of Justice.  I think that the Court Cases take far too long and the Courts should be moved to a place like Burnley in Lancashire, it would solve the local economy depression and, more importantly, it would be able to decide cases and dish out sentences speedily.  A few chosen thumpings could sort out most of the worlds problems!

Our cycling trip has come to an end, rather a damp end but it has been a great experience.  I will do a little review of the trip tomorrow.  We had a lovely meal out (it makes a change from having a salad in a plastic bowl) and prepared for our multiple train journeys to get to Strasbourg.  We will stay overnight at Strasbourg and still thinking about our options to returning to the motorhome at Bad Bellingen on Tuesday.  We will have to ‘clog’ it down south again.....

We have had the pleasure of watching Strictly Come Dancing Results on BBC One.  It seems the Dutch can get a bit of British TV,  no wonder they speak English so well. It hasn’t been available in Germany or France or Switzerland, so we never turned on any of the TV’s in the rooms we’ve stayed in.  I’m currently watching Antiques Roadshow.....now we are getting rather old, ‘Antiques Roadshow’ might be a good name for our next epic bike ride!!