For a long weekend
filled with art, culture, shopping and walks on the beach, The Hague is just the right city.
If you don’t necessarily want to swim in the North Sea, the off-season is the best time. Because with the right clothes you can enjoy the sea air in peace in winter. Endless wide sandy beaches invite you to take long walks to absorb as much salt, iodine, magnesium and the small salt droplets in the maritime air as possible before returning to the home office.
The skin and the bronchi like the sea air and at the same time it is a proven natural remedy for states of exhaustion and sleep disorders.
The beach in the Scheveningen district of The Hague is only six kilometers from the city centre. However, you will look in vain for romantic fish restaurants or stylish small harbor bars.
Scheveningen, which is easily accessible from the city center by tram, is too commercialized for that. One large café and restaurant after the other are lined up next to the casino, which is also available. For more romantic places to stop, you have to walk a little further along the beach.
SHOPPING IN THE MOST BEAUTIFUL ARCHITECTURAL AMBIENCE
Different in the city center of The Hague. Here you are surrounded in many streets by dreamlike mansions. You walk through light avenues, wander through the wonderful scenery of the historic buildings of the government quarter, cross cheerful squares and admire the many wonderful facades of the houses in amazement.
The De Bijenkorf department store has an Art Nouveau façade and well-preserved Art Nouveau staircases that are well worth seeing. However, not only architecture fans will be happy in this beehive. In the De Bijenkorf department store, the trendiest designers in Europe are represented with their collections, as well as unusual cosmetic lines that are otherwise rarely found outside of London.
Shopping in The Hague is fun, because the good specialist shops that franchise chains or online trading have put an end to early in other places are still around here.
Fountain pens have been sold by the royal purveyor Akkerman in the Haagse Passage, which is well worth seeing, since 1910 in the third generation. A fantastic selection of cooking utensils is available right next door at DOK in the same clear passage, which is architecturally worth seeing.
Handmade hats, each a small work of art, can be found in the hat workshop at Berry Rutjes.
Regardless of whether you are looking for a press for the production of classic terrines or a high-tech juice extractor, the selection at DOK Cookware is extremely large and offers everything an ambitious cook could wish for. At the latest when choosing kitchen towels you have to be decisive, because the selection of the estimated hundreds of variations in colors and qualities is unparalleled.
The city, in which parking fees are of course paid by app, also offers high-tech shopping when it comes to elegant antiques and cool Scandinavian design. Most of the shops are housed in architecturally very appealing houses and are extremely attractively designed, so that shopping becomes an overall experience.
PURE ART EXPERIENCE
Even the most ambitious museum visitor now wearily dismisses the all-too-familiar colorful mixture in a museum collection: one or two works by every famous artist, from the Middle Ages to the modern age, and often not exactly the outstanding ones, can be seen . mass instead of class.
The Hague understands the art of concentration
In the former home of the rich merchant Johan Maurits, the Count of Naussau-Siegen, who played a key role in the development of the Brazilian colonies for sugar production, the Dutch masters of the so-called golden age such as Rembrandt, Vermeer, Fabritius and Hals can be found in the authentic ambience and many more to see.
The concentration on the artists of this age makes the painting collection so interesting. One discovers female painters of this time who created fantastic still lifes and can get lost for hours just in the depiction of the fabrics and the decoration of the famous portraits of rich merchants and nobles.
If you look out through the windows of the Mauritshuis, you can see the historic buildings of the government district and part of the former canals. A feast for the eyes and soul, right through to the museum’s stylish, modern restaurant and café.
Museum Voorlinden in nearby upscale Waasenaar, home of the Dutch royal family, focuses on contemporary art. In addition to the clean, modern museum wing, there is a mansion that houses the museum’s restaurant. In between there is a garden designed by the famous garden architect Piet Oudolf.
For lovers
His modern Dutch style of garden design, which can also be admired on the High Line in New York and at important galleries in the Countryside of England, is worth the trip to Waasenaar just to stroll through the garden.
CULINARY COLONIAL HERITAGE
To this day, the Dutch are leaders in many maritime industries. This is how the special skills of the former powerful seafaring nation find their modern application in times of climate change.
The Dutch East India Company, founded in 1602, an association of Dutch merchants and one of the largest trading companies in the 17th and 18th centuries, which at times had up to 4,700 ships under the flag, decided to set up the merchant shipping headquarters in Batavia, today’s Indonesian capital Jakarta to settle
The Dutch East Indies controlled the spice trade from the Indies to Europe for many years.
After World War II, many Dutch expatriates returned from former colonies such as Indonesia. The political unrest associated with the independence of the colonies brought many more emigrants from Indonesia, Sri Lanka and the Moluccas to the Netherlands.
A center of Indonesian cuisine has developed in The Hague. A number of Indonesian restaurants, such as Keraton Damai at Groot Hertoginnelaan 57, serve excellent Indonesian dishes, so booking a table is advisable.
At least as far as the ambiance is concerned, you feel like you’ve been transported back to the time of the colonies when you have high tea in the Hotel Des Indes. But here, too, the mix of history, tradition and modernity is successful. Service is formally dressed but casual. Elegantly dressed ladies enjoy their tea alongside hipsters in jeans and sleeveless T-shirts that show off their tattoos particularly well.
A long weekend in The Hague means relaxed enjoyment with quality for the eyes, the stomach, the soul and the bronchi.
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