We were lucky enough to have my sister, Noelle, come all the way out to visit us this September! Mostly, we spent our time in Amsterdam, including visiting the Van Goph museum, the Kattenkabinet (a cat museum), De Poezenboot (a cat shelter on a houseboat), a canal cruise, the Supper Club, and our favorite restaurant here, Restaurant de Kas.
Noelle was also curious to see more of the Netherlands than just Amsterdam, so we took a day trip to Leiden on her second day here! We love the Saturday market at Leiden, and we also had fun seeing the old fort and its surrounding park. For the next weekend, we went further in the same southern direction to The Hague (Den Haag) for a one-night trip and planned to stop at possibly Delft, Rotterdam, or both on the way home.
Friday September 15th - The Hague
The nice thing about doing a trip within the Netherlands is that transit is extremely easy to the point where we’ve rarely had to think about looking up directions in advance of a trip. We can assume we can leave most anytime during a given day and not be waiting for trams/trains to arrive for more than a few minutes up to a quarter of an hour (if we’re unlucky). For larger cities like The Hague, however, it’s smart to catch one of the Intercity direct trains that only stops at major cities, speeding up travel time a bit. Still, even the Intercity trains come fairly regularly.
We took one such train to The Hague on Friday afternoon. The trip was smooth and our hotel, near Het Plein, was just a 10 minute walk from the train station.
After getting settled at the hotel, we set out to explore the city and we were too tempted to avoid stopping for a pre-dinner gelato.
During the train ride, I had been researching what to do in The Hague, and I found this (much more useful) travel blog that described a wine store called de Filosoof (the Philosopher) that supposedly had “one of the cutest and fluffiest cats that [the author had] ever seen.” Of course I was intrigued.
We set out to find the fluffy white cat, named Socrates, but sadly the store was not open and only the store logo of Socrates was present in place of the real cat. We did spy a bottle of Socrates-brand gin in the shop window, though. We tried returning to the shop the next day, but it was still closed unfortunately.
On the plus side, we did find some colorful street art near de Filosoof that was very cat-focused. Even apart from the cat art, the city had some very nice street art like the cranes in the last image (Bonus: spot the callback to a previous post [hint]).
For dinner we went to Ristorante Giuliano’s (not to be confused with the Giuliano’s Pizza & Pasta next store, which we accidentally visited first). This meal was actually some of my favorite Italian food I’ve had in Europe! (Note: we are behind in updating the blog, and I’m actually writing this after trips to Italy and West Austria, so the previous sentence is a strong statement). I had gnocchi with pesto, and the pesto was SO good. I have been trying to find an opportunity to go back here for dinner.
Saturday September 16th
Trip to Scheveningen
On Saturday morning, we set out to the nearby beach in the Scheveningen district. Fun fact: the word “Scheveningen” is notoriously difficult to pronounce for non-Dutch speakers. According to Wikipedia, it was even used as a shibboleth during World War II to identify German spies.
We were lucky that the weather was pleasant for a beach day, and we enjoyed exploring the pier and boardwalk before finding a place to settle on the beach.
We ended up picking a place on the northeast side of the beach as the beach southwest of the pier was being worked on, and it was absolutely infested with seagulls. I wonder what they were digging up that was so tasty?
After the beach, we took the tram back into central Den Haag. We accidentally got off the tram a stop too early, but it ended up being nice walking past the cute shops and cafes on Noordeinde street.
Stop at Delft
We took a short train ride over to Delft after picking our things up from the hotel. The town is smaller than The Hague and it was a charming place to visit. We also had a nice, light meal at Hummus, which is a mediterranean restaurant (as the name suggests).
In the end, our initial goal of visiting The Hague, Delft, and Rotterdam in a single one-night trip was sort of realized as we did have a train transfer in Rotterdam!
Last modified on 2024-06-15