Weekend in The Hague & Delft

Last Friday, Jon told me to pack a bag and get in the car for a surprise weekend away. I would never in a million years have suspected that our destination would be The Hague. His point was that we needed a couple of days away from home to escape the madness of the past couple of weeks, and that was a brilliant idea. He picked The Hague, he said, because we had never been there, it looked pretty, and there was a beach. Of course, as we both discovered, The Hague is much more than that.

Friday

We arrived fairly late in the afternoon thanks to the complete madness of Belgian motorways that are utterly and irremediably unable to absorb any sort of traffic that’s not just two small cars and one truck on a section of twenty kilometres, and also thanks to maintenance work on the road during the busiest weekend of the holidays. Something should also probably be said regarding the general state of the ring of Antwerp, but I cannot formulate any of that in any way that would be even remotely polite. 

Jon had picked the Marriott Bonvoy by the World Forum, which I thought was a very good choice since it is ideally located between the beach and the old town. The rooms are clean and well decorated, the bedding is that of the Marriott, so if you’ve stayed at one, you know—and if you haven’t, it’s like sleeping on a very soft cloud, and we had a nice view on the Kunstmuseum. As we’d arrived late after a nerve-wracking drive, we sat down at the bar, had a drink and a late lunch, and just rested and talked for a bit. I think we both needed it. I had a Bloody Mary, which is my ritual upon arriving at a new hotel, and which roughly translates to “Let’s get this holiday started!”

Afterwards, we went for a nice walk around town and to the beach. It was still incredibly hot (Europe has been through a seemingly never-ending heatwave this summer) but it was nice to walk along the sea (in the sea, mainly, if I’m being honest) and just took our time to see the sights, walk around the harbour, look at the pretty ships, and even do a healthy amount of people-watching. We didn’t really make plans to do anything on any day, least of all on the first day, but we still managed to walk a little over 13 km (± 8 mi) according to my FitBit, which isn’t so bad for just one evening of being idle. 

On the way in, when I had finally guessed our destination, Jon mentioned the Mauritshuis, so we decided to visit it the next morning, and I suggested Madurodam for good measure, as it was something I’d heard of as a child growing up in Belgium but had never visited for some reason. This is odd because everyone in our parents’ generation went there when they were kids, so apparently they just collectively forgot to take their own children there or something. 

We went to bed early, had a wonderful night of blissful sleep, got up for one of those completely unreasonable Dutch breakfasts, and were ready to start the day.

Saturday

If there is just one piece of advice that I can give you when it comes to travelling in The Netherlands, it is to rent a bicycle. The Dutch love their bikes, and they have bike lanes everywhere in cities and towns, so much so that in The Hague, it will literally take you more time to go from point A to point B in a car than by bike. It’s easy, it’s quick, and more importantly, it is safe. 

Initially, the keys that the front desk manager had given us were for Torpedo bikes, which led to a lot of confusion on my part as I kept trying to use handbrakes that simply weren’t there, so when the penny finally dropped that the Dutch prefer to brake by pedalling backwards, I reasoned that I’d probably kill myself in a horrible accident at the first intersection and asked for “regular” bikes. Fortunately, the hotel has as many handbrake-equipped bikes as it did Torpedoes, and it was all sorted out in a matter of minutes. I still think I should probably learn how to ride a Torpedo bike as it might be a useful life skill, but I’m afraid to die, so I won’t be doing that anytime soon. Anyway, on our merry way we went to the city centre, its pretty canals, its lovely architecture, and of course, its art museum.

Mauritshuis 

If you have read my previous post about the Alphonse Mucha temporary exhibition at the Kunstmuseum of The Hague, you probably know how obsessed I am with good museum staging. Long story short, I’ve spent a lot of time in museums in my life, which translates into a (maybe overly) critical attitude towards the way art and artefacts are displayed in galleries and how the relevant information is presented to visitors. For example, to me, a good exhibition has to fulfil three main criteria:

• It has to be accessible both in the sense of being adapted to disabled people’s needs and readily understandable.
• It has to be instructional, as in it has to teach me something I didn’t know.
• It has to be enjoyable: I need to have a good time there, whether it be because it is aesthetically pleasing or intellectually challenging.

In those respects, and with all due consideration for its venerability, I am sorry to report that the Mauritshuis just isn’t it (this actually is one of those cases where I’m glad that this blog isn’t sponsored, allowing me to write whatever I want without worrying about what anyone might say). Here are my impressions.

The Mauritshuis (offical name: Koninklijk Kabinet van Schilderijenis, “the royal cabinet of paintings”) undeniably pretty. Located in a 17th-century Dutch Classical “house” (it’s a palace, really), the setting of the museum is enchanting. I’m no big fan of the underground entrance that has you start your visit through some nondescript uber-contemporary open floor that doesn’t reflect the spirit of the collections in any way, but that’s a matter of taste, so I will not hold this against them. I’m also no big fan of their bag policy since they made me leave my backpack (a small Fjällraven Kanken whose entire point is that you can carry it like a handbag, which is exactly what I was doing) at the cloakroom while letting the woman right ahead of me get into the exhibition with a full purse that could seriously have contained a toddler, to give you an idea of the size of that beast. Never mind; your museum, your rules. It’s also worth noting that with all the time I’ve spent in The Netherlands, it was my first ever experience of having people insisting on switching to English when hearing me speak Dutch, leading to more difficulty in understanding what they were saying. It was all a bit awkward.

I found the exhibitions in themselves to be rather frustrating. Sure, the art is impressive. After all, the Mauritshuis boasts what is probably the most extensive collection of Dutch and Flemish art in the world, from Brueghel to Vermeer. They host one of my all-time favourite paintings, The Anatomy Lesson of Dr Nicolaes Tulp (1632) by Rembrandt, some serious Van Dyck, Peeters and Steen stuff—and of course, they have the Girl with a Pearl Earring (1665) by Vermeer. and it’s all very well, except you cannot see the paintings properly. And no, it’s not because there are too many people in the galleries at the same time, or because they come too close to the paintings; no, this time it’s not the museum dwellers’ fault at all. This time, it’s entirely on the designers of the exhibitions.

The problem is the light. If you’re visiting the Mauritshuis, you’ll be faced with a dilemma: either you’ll stand far from the paintings and you won’t be able to see them because, in 99% of the cases, their focal point is hidden by a halo created by the reflection of the lightbulb that’s directly facing it, or you’ll come closer to the painting and you’ll be unable to take it in because it’s just too big. The challenges here seem to be that (1) the rooms are too small, hence creating a lack of proper distance between the lighting fixtures and the artefacts, and (2) there are windows in practically every room in awkward positions, hence having an influx of daylight that varies throughout the day and would require the use of dimmers to adapt the intensity of a room’s lighting to the level of natural light that floods it. I’m no curator, but those systems exist, and it is a shame that after being completely refurbished not even ten years ago, the Mauritshuis hasn’t made use of this technology; all the more that given how generally dark they are, the paintings that are exhibited there would require specific lighting.

Another issue is that the Mauritshuis has been hit by a bout of what I call “the dialogue fad”, where a work of art is placed in a position relative to another work of art of which it is vaguely reminiscent in order to create a sense of conversation between the two of them. When done correctly, it prompts all sorts of reflections and actually enhances the experience by making it more intriguing than if you had seen the two artefacts separately. When done wrong, it is very confusing. In the case of the Maurtishuis and its Flash Back temporary exhibition, and in my humble opinion, I’d say that it was well done in two instances (Rembrandt’s The Anatomy Lesson of Dr Nicolaes Tulp & Stephan Vanfleteren’s Corpus #1632 / Rembrandt’s Two African Men & Anton Corbijn’s Twee Afrikaanse mannen, you can see what the displays actually look like here and there) and completely baffling everywhere else they had attempted it. The reason why it was all unintelligible is very simple: the labels were placed in the most creative spots where you couldn’t see them, and instead of having the thumbnail pictures show the actual painting they were supposed to describe, they showed the painting they were a reference to.

After three hours of this nonsense and of diligently taking a couple of underwhelming pictures whose exposure, contrast, highlights, and shadows would have to be heavily edited on Lightroom, and of course claiming my backpack from the cloakroom, I was ready for lunch.

Here are the heavily edited pictures, by the way:

Oh, by the way, we had lunch at Cloos on Het Plein on the corner of Korte Poten and Korte Houtstraat, and it was lovely. Plus, their outside seating is right under some trees, which offered a much-needed respite from the third heatwave of the summer.

Madurodam

I know I have said this before, but the Dutch really know how to build an amusement park, and I love them for it. Madurodam (opened in 1952) is a miniature park, in that it is where you will be able to find 1:25 scale replicas of Dutch landmarks; it’s not like, a park that’s really small. Exotically, it also contains a bona fide Douglas DC-3 Dakota which you can board, which for an aviation nerd like me (as in “I love planes; I hate flying”) is the highlight of the park. On top of miniatures of the Kunstmuseum, Mauritshuis, Royal Palace, windmills and various town squares which you can admire, Madurodam is a very interactive experience and Jon and I had a blast playing with the model dams, floodgates, harbour cranes, and even putting out a fire on a ship. Plus, there are six atypical rides and attractions which you won’t find anywhere else:

• Waterwolf: An interactive walk-in dark ride where you learn all about the drainage of the Netherlands’ largest inland lake in the 19th century, and you even get to operate a steam machine. Lots of fun. Might get a little wet.
• George’s Story: A 5-metre high and 180-degree panorama screen that will show you the life story of the man after whom the park is named: George Maduro, a Dutch law student from Curaçao who fought the Nazi occupation forces, joined the Resistance, and ultimately died in Dachau concentration camp. He was posthumously awarded the Medal of Knight Fourth class of the Military Order of William, the highest and oldest military decoration in the Kingdom of the Netherlands.
• Zo Groot is Oranje (“So Big is Orange”): A football-3D experience (we did not do that one).
• Het Hof van Nederland (“The Court of the Netherlands”): Experience the most important moment in Dutch history, the First Assembly of the Free States in the Hall of States in 1572, which laid the grounds for the foundation of the Netherlands.
• Nieuw Amsterdam (“New Amsterdam”): An immersive walk-in dark ride which starts on a ship cruising to America and ends with the decision of the Dutch settlers to surrender their city, New Amsterdam, to the British in order to protect it. The British would eventually rename the Dutch town “New York”. You may have heard of it. (My favourite).
• Fantasitron: A 3D selfie photo booth where you can have a 3D model of yourself made from pictures taken in the photo booth. The model will then be sent to your home.

I feel that it should be noted that practically everyone from our parents’ generation in Belgium visited Madurodam at some point when they were kids, but practically no one from our own generation has ever visited it. It doesn’t make a lot of sense, but it is what it is. All in all, it made for a lovely afternoon.

Etc.

After Madurodam, we took our bicycles and headed back to our hotel at a leisurely pace, but not before riding through The Hague a little more just to take in the sights. Between the heat and all the cycling, walking, and playing with all the toys at Madurodam, we were exhausted, so we decided to call it a night, took a quick shower, and headed downstairs to the restaurant.

I know that we should have tried to find a nice restaurant in The Hague, maybe on the harbour, but honestly, we were just looking for a quick meal that would get us to bed ASAP. We’ll do better next time. That said, the Gallery Restaurant at the Marriott Den Haag deserves to be mentioned as we were pleasantly surprised with the menu and the service, both of which were impeccable.

Sunday

We started our third and last day in The Hague with breakfast in bed (I had waffles in bed on a Sunday, and that’s enough to keep me happy until the end of the year). We then packed our stuff, checked out of our hotel, and walked to our next destination (on the same block): the Kunstmuseum.

Kunstmuseum

Ever since we had arrived on Friday, the Kunstmuseum had intrigued me a lot, and visiting it was a fantastic decision since we got to see the Alphonse Mucha temporary exhibition and check out the rest of their beautiful collection. 

I liked the Kunstmuseum much more than the Mauritshuis, not because I prefer modern art to other movements, but because the visit was more relaxed, there were fewer people, and the contents were displayed in a manner that suited my tastes a little more. Plus, the building alone is magnificent and their choices in terms of collections are both smart and bold. I’m a fan. 

My painting highlights include (by chronological order) Vincent Van Gogh’s Self-Portrait (1887),  Willem Maris’ Duck with Eight Chicks (undated, 19th c.), George Hendrik Breitner’s Girl in a red kimono (c. 1893), Pablo Picasso’s La femme au pot de moutarde (“Woman with mustard pot”, 1910), Egon Schiele’s Portrait of Edith (1915), Wassily Kandinsky’s Bild mit weisser Form (“Painting with White Form”, 1913) and Ein Zentrum (“A Centre”, 1924), and Charley Toorop’s Self-Portrait with Palette (1932-1933).

As far as sculptures and installations are concerned, my intention was caught by Into One-Another II To P.P.P. by Berlinde De Bruyckere (2010), Carousel by Bruce Nauman (1988), and the extremely powerful Doctrine of Salvation by Folkert de Jong (2015).

I was fascinated with Louise Bourgeois’ three showstoppers: Clouds and Caverns (1982-1989), CELL XXVI (2003), and Spider Couple (2003). I don’t quite know how to explain what they made me feel, but I was in complete awe of each of the three pieces before realising they had been made by the same artist.

I also really enjoyed Wiebke Siem’s various pieces which make up a whole exhibition on the first floor of the museum. I love her whimsical universe.

After spending the entire morning at the Kustmuseum—and I honestly believe that it would take weeks to see it all—we decided to leave The Hague behind and go to Delft (15 minutes from there), as the town happened to be on our way home and neither of us had ever visited it. 

Delft

Delft is so pretty that it should be illegal. Seriously, it is fantastic. It has the quality of well-preserved ancient towns without the overly touristy vibes that I tend to dislike in Bruges, for example. It is still very much lived-in, and it is all for the best. Of course, there are plenty of beautiful sights to see, to say nothing of the idyllic canals and secluded courtyards. And it even boasts a leaning tower, because why not?

That’s all for today, folks! Do you like The Hague and Delft? What are your favourite things to do there? Let me know in the comments!

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Addresses

This is a quick reminder that no post on Ms Unexpected is sponsored, ever. I don’t do affiliated links either.

The Hague

• The Hague Marriott Hotel: Johan de Wittlaan 30, 2517 JR Den Haag. Website: The Hague Marriott Hotel.
• The Mauritshuis is open to visitors on Mondays from 1 pm to 6 pm and from Tuesdays to Sundays, 1 am – 6 pm. | Plein 29, 2511 CS Den Haag. Website: Mauritshuis.
• The Kunstmuseum is open from Tuesday to Sunday, 10 am- 5 pm. | Stadhouderslaan 41, 2517 HV Den Haag. Website: Kunstmuseum.
• Madurodam welcomes visitors every day of the week from 10 am to 5 pm. | George Maduroplein 1, 2584 RZ  Den Haag. Website: Madurodam.
• Cloos, a lovely bar/restaurant across the square from the Mauritshuis. | Plein 12, 2511 CR Den Haag. Website: Cloos.

Delft

• Kobus Kuch, an adorable little café/bar with outdoor seating under the trees on a small town square. It’s basically perfect. | Beestenmarkt 1, 2611 GA Delft. Website: Kobus Kuch.
• To scratch that Delftware itch, I recommend Heinen Delfts Blauw Blue classics next to the Townhall| Markt 45, 2611 GR Delft. Website: Heinen Delfts Blauw. I couldn’t resist this miniature giraffe and the traditional tulip vase. Other typical Delftware gifts and souvenirs include klompjes (“clogs”) and the Kussend paar (“kissing couple”).
• De Roos (“The Rose”) Windmill is open to visitors from Wednesdays to Sundays, 1 pm – 5 pm | Phoenixstraat 111, 112, 2611 AK Delft. Website: De Roos Molen.

All texts and pictures ©Ms. Unexpected.

Last updated: 07/09/2022