Though day 7 was our first day in Rotterdam, we spent it entirely at the Hague. In the morning, we walked to the train station to take the train from Rotterdam to the Hague. We’ve taken the train many times on this trip, and I find it so impressive how simple the scan-in-scan-out ticket system is in the Netherlands, and how smoothly and punctually the trains run when compared to train companies like Amtrak in the United States.
After arriving in the Hague, we stopped for a quick snack from Albert Heijn before exploring the city for a couple hours. The Netherlands’ political capital reminds me a lot of Washington D.C., and the architecture and atmosphere are more industrial and basic compared to the colorful environment in Amsterdam.
A group of friends and I went atop Binnenhof Viewing Tower, a giant metal tower that gave you a great arial view of the Hague and the Binnenhof, which is a collection of most of the Dutch political buildings. Then, the whole group stopped for an authentic Indonesian lunch, which the Dutch do quite well as almost 20% of the Dutch population has Indonesian heritage. I got a chicken and noodles dish, which was delicious!
After lunch, the whole group visited the Peace Palace. We did an audio history tour in the mini museum outside the palace, which gave cool anecdotes about the palace’s function containing both the International Court of Justice and the Permanent Court of Arbitration, as well as describing how it was built. Did you know that Andrew Carnegie funded the initial construction of the palace, but only on the condition that the palace would install a library? Well, that library is now the largest international law library in the world!
We finished our day trip with a trip to Scheveningen beach, which was only a 10 minute tram ride from the city center. Though it was quite cold, it was cool to see that beach culture in the Netherlands is not that much different than the US, with the Scheveningen boardwalk covered in different food and souvenir shops. After the beach, we took a calming tram and train ride back to the hostel in Rotterdam.
