Europe 2023, August 25

Had some serious delayed soreness in both arms from carrying the suitcase yesterday. I found a good running route down along the canals, a great path that looks like goes on forever. Afterwards I tried my luck turning up to the hotel breakfast area and found out it was included with my booking, similar stuff again to previous places but also had great mini pancakes.

I took an earlier morning train than planned to Den Haag also known as The Hague, again I had a daily booking for any train each way.

The first stop after arriving was following the signs to the Mauritshuis museum. It was quite expensive at nearly 20 euros, in a nicely decorate building that was more like a refurbished house, but only had two floors worth of paintings.

The lower floor had lots of random paintings and old portraits. There was a few Vermeer on the upper floor including the most famous Girl With Pearl Earring, the collection from other well known artists like Rembrandt weren't very good. I probably spent an hour walking around, it wasn't too busy and didn't have any descriptions for most paintings other than the artist and title.

I planned to see the Binnenhof / Ridderzaal old court next but it was all closed for a five year excavation and renovation. Instead went around some of the centrum aka city centre:

• De Passage shopping hall
• Grote Markt
• Het Plein square
• St James church

There was a couple of other optional museums on my list but were spread out quite far around the city, although still reasonably accessible by a good tram network. Instead got the tram to the Scheveningen area by the beach.

They've constructed a large pier with some rides on the top level, on the bottom level was some very empty and quite old looking restaurants. There was a decent amount of people around on the beach and boardwalk, but only about one person in each of these restaurant at around 1pm. Probably they aren't as popular as the many large restaurants that have been established along the boardwalk. The pier also felt like it was from the 90's or something going by the vintage decorations and all the pinball machines.

I walked down the beach for a while and found another tram stop going back in to centrum. I didn't have too much more to look at in the city area so got the train back to Eindhoven a little early instead of visiting more museums. Since the train was only a few minutes away I thought I was going to miss out on a magnet but just had time to get one from the information centre at the station.

Back at the hotel I Managed to locate the self-service laundry in the hotel, it was hidden away down the end of a hallway without any signs, near the cleaning staff rooms. The gym was in a equally strange location down two sets of stairs in some dark basement room.