Seven: Infinity and Beyond

We visited Den Haag on Saturday. I forgot the camera of course, so we bought a disposable. We stopped by Scheveningen - the Netherlands' most popular beach - on the way to The Hague. It had a Coney Island meets Martha's Vinyard sort of feel, with grass dunes and a boardwalk. By all accounts the place gets nuts in the summer.

In The Hague we walked around the Binnenhof ('Inner Court') and the Plein ('Square':essentially the city center). The Binnenhof houses the Dutch parliament and the Prime Minister's office. Also many international courts. It used to be a castle surrounded by moats but has been modified many times as government offices grew.

We went to the Mauritshuis Royal Picture Gallery (Vermeer's the girl with a pearl earring and view of Delft and Rembrandt's The anatomy lesson of Dr Nicolaes Tulp among the portraits, still lifes, landscapes and cityscapes from Holland's 17th century). We also visited Escher in het Paleis. Escher starts to melt your brain after an hour or so. Some of his earlier cityscapes are just as impressive as all the plane and infinity stuff.

Later we drove through some old world neighborhoods with estate/manor type homes along beautiful tree-lined streets. We stopped in for a beer at a pub where there were more dogs than people. The dogs wanted you to feed them peanuts. We had a great meal at an Indonesian restaurant, but as usual ate way too much.

Kim traded in the convertible Puegot (boooo!) for a regular car with a real back seat. Some sort of German vehicle (Opel Astra). Now we can take our visitors to places outside Amsterdam (yey!).