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The Hague, Day 4: An Adventure
Sep. 26th, 2022 06:15 pmThe Hague Day 4: An Adventure
Today I wanted to bike up to Leiden, the next little city north of us. But by the time I was ready to head out, it was raining. I grabbed my rain coat and umbrella and (just in case) bike helmet and went out anyway.
I wandered roughly northeastward, with the idea being that if the rain let up, I could grab a bike, and otherwise I could make a decision when I hit the outer radius of Donkey Republic bikes, a few miles northeast.
For the early part of the walk, I walked along one of the canals. It was quite nice. I love waterwalks (and rides!). The Hague isn't nearly as attractive as inner Amsterdam because there's a little less brick and because the buildings tend to be apartment buildings and like structures, not single homes, but it's still an attractive European city, and a canal walk shows it at its best.
I eventually got up to the Haagse Bos, which Chris & I briefly touched upon on Friday. It's a primordial forest that's survived and is now a park within the city. Hiking in the rain is actually nice if you're bundled up (as I was) and the paths aren't muddy (which was mostly the case). So I walked the Haagse Bos end to end and found that it was an entirely gorgeous park. I really felt like I was in the forest primeval, and it was relatively empty on a rainy Monday morning. The weirdest thing about the forest was probably the rivers, most of which were solid green with algae. I'd noticed it in some of the canals in The Hague that no longer have an outlet, but I didn't expect to see it in pretty much every forest river!
At the far end of the forest was a cafe that had been lauded for its terrace seating. It turns out that one of the trickiest things while staying safe so far from home is eating, because they either need to have outdoor seating or I need to be able to take it home. So, this seemed perfect. Except Google said they opened at eleven and it was almost noon and they still had their Sorry, Closed sign up.
(In my adventure, I had passed the threshold when I entered the forest, and now I faced the first of my tests.)
I played around with my phone for a while, noted that the weather reported the constant rain was supposed to begin clearing around 1pm and also found another cafe in the next park over, the Landgoed Clingendael, which had also been on my list of wild places to see. It turned out to look much like the Haagse Bos (which was delightful) but with some less well-maintained paths that were becoming filled with water (which was not).
Cafe #2 turned out to be open, and they had outside tables and chairs protected by umbrellas. It was just what I wanted, though the staff was a little confused why I'd want to sit out in the cold. I explained that I was about 12,000 miles from home, living in Hawaii, and they understood. Though they thought that living on Hawaii I was probably British. That's the second time I've told someone I lived in Hawaii and they had no idea it was part of the United States, which I consider a plus given the general overentitled nature of American tourists.
Lunch was a simple "tosti", but it kept me going.
I felt like the rain was genuinely lightening up, and so I began a half-mile trek to get to one of the last Donkey Republic bikes of the North. I finally found my quest object in a pleasant little suburb, as we were obviously out of Hague proper by then.
And as the rain disappeared, I rode!
The ride north was gorgeous, along beautiful wooded streets. It felt like I was still in the forest! The houses were pretty far apart, and often looked like mini-mansions. It was like biking through a fairy tale.
At one point I began to see a surge of kids coming toward me, clearly because a school had just gotten out. None of the boys seemed able to ride with their hands on their handlebars.
I eventually made a turn eastward to loop around to the other side of the highway and the train tracks and head back into The Hague, along the bike path that I'd admired alongside the train tracks on my trips into town. Thus, I briefly saw Leiden (but didn't make it into the center of town to see any of the historic buildings or anything).
And that's when It began to rain again. Pretty much when I was as far as possible from home. I passed by the Leiden train station pretty shortly afterward, and could have stopped there and hopped on the train, as I'd seen the first car allowed bikes, but nope, I was going to ride my path! (I only regretted it from about 10km to 8km out of The Hague, when the rain was the hardest and I was the wettest.)
The route back was entirely different, because it was all fields and cows. A delightful look at the Dutch landscape. I was also amused to see the bikepath ran along a canal with the train on the other side, showing off a history of transportation. And pretty soon the kms really began to disappear under my tires (much faster than miles!)
I should note the bike paths were all A-MAY-ZING. Well-signed. Contiguous. Mostly bike boulevards (meaning two lanes, one each direction, separated from the street), sometimes running along a street, but sometimes just heading off on their own. The only disconcerting thing is that scooters get to use those same paths. A couple of times they made me jump when they rushed past me. But that's probably just me: I hear a scooter and assume it's out on the street.
Besides the rain adventure on the way back (lightening up as I got closer to the Hague), I also got the adventure that my phone battery was running low. That has been a problem on a few of my outings. Though it's a pretty new phone, it just doesn't have enough oomph to last a whole day out.
This was particularly notable because I needed the phone to return the Donkey Republic bike! So as it was getting low, I was trying to find a return spot, and also one that was close enough to the center of The Hague that I wouldn't mind walking. And then the phone started draining really fast on the bottom 10%, which I've had happen more than once. I finally pulled into the Den Hague Laan v NOI train station (whatever that means) and was racing to find the return spot as my percentages ticked down. I managed to get it locked and returned! Whew! And 100 yards later my phone died.
One last adventure: I'd somehow gotten turned around a few times trying to find that return spot. (I'd actually been aiming for the Haagse Bos and somehow ended up going parallel to it!). And now I needed to get back to the hotel without a phone!
Spoiler: reader, I did. I actually got turned around a few more times (or stayed turned around) but eventually I started finding signing for Den Haag Centraal, which is the central train station. I followed those, walked through the station from the back, and came out to the front that I'd seen before. From there I was able to catch a tram home.
Not wanting to fight with finding an appropriate restaurant again, I grabbed some dinner from the local market. They had Cheese & Onion chips! Mmm!
And now the RWOT workshop starts tonight, with our poster session.
Today I wanted to bike up to Leiden, the next little city north of us. But by the time I was ready to head out, it was raining. I grabbed my rain coat and umbrella and (just in case) bike helmet and went out anyway.
I wandered roughly northeastward, with the idea being that if the rain let up, I could grab a bike, and otherwise I could make a decision when I hit the outer radius of Donkey Republic bikes, a few miles northeast.
For the early part of the walk, I walked along one of the canals. It was quite nice. I love waterwalks (and rides!). The Hague isn't nearly as attractive as inner Amsterdam because there's a little less brick and because the buildings tend to be apartment buildings and like structures, not single homes, but it's still an attractive European city, and a canal walk shows it at its best.
I eventually got up to the Haagse Bos, which Chris & I briefly touched upon on Friday. It's a primordial forest that's survived and is now a park within the city. Hiking in the rain is actually nice if you're bundled up (as I was) and the paths aren't muddy (which was mostly the case). So I walked the Haagse Bos end to end and found that it was an entirely gorgeous park. I really felt like I was in the forest primeval, and it was relatively empty on a rainy Monday morning. The weirdest thing about the forest was probably the rivers, most of which were solid green with algae. I'd noticed it in some of the canals in The Hague that no longer have an outlet, but I didn't expect to see it in pretty much every forest river!
At the far end of the forest was a cafe that had been lauded for its terrace seating. It turns out that one of the trickiest things while staying safe so far from home is eating, because they either need to have outdoor seating or I need to be able to take it home. So, this seemed perfect. Except Google said they opened at eleven and it was almost noon and they still had their Sorry, Closed sign up.
(In my adventure, I had passed the threshold when I entered the forest, and now I faced the first of my tests.)
I played around with my phone for a while, noted that the weather reported the constant rain was supposed to begin clearing around 1pm and also found another cafe in the next park over, the Landgoed Clingendael, which had also been on my list of wild places to see. It turned out to look much like the Haagse Bos (which was delightful) but with some less well-maintained paths that were becoming filled with water (which was not).
Cafe #2 turned out to be open, and they had outside tables and chairs protected by umbrellas. It was just what I wanted, though the staff was a little confused why I'd want to sit out in the cold. I explained that I was about 12,000 miles from home, living in Hawaii, and they understood. Though they thought that living on Hawaii I was probably British. That's the second time I've told someone I lived in Hawaii and they had no idea it was part of the United States, which I consider a plus given the general overentitled nature of American tourists.
Lunch was a simple "tosti", but it kept me going.
I felt like the rain was genuinely lightening up, and so I began a half-mile trek to get to one of the last Donkey Republic bikes of the North. I finally found my quest object in a pleasant little suburb, as we were obviously out of Hague proper by then.
And as the rain disappeared, I rode!
The ride north was gorgeous, along beautiful wooded streets. It felt like I was still in the forest! The houses were pretty far apart, and often looked like mini-mansions. It was like biking through a fairy tale.
At one point I began to see a surge of kids coming toward me, clearly because a school had just gotten out. None of the boys seemed able to ride with their hands on their handlebars.
I eventually made a turn eastward to loop around to the other side of the highway and the train tracks and head back into The Hague, along the bike path that I'd admired alongside the train tracks on my trips into town. Thus, I briefly saw Leiden (but didn't make it into the center of town to see any of the historic buildings or anything).
And that's when It began to rain again. Pretty much when I was as far as possible from home. I passed by the Leiden train station pretty shortly afterward, and could have stopped there and hopped on the train, as I'd seen the first car allowed bikes, but nope, I was going to ride my path! (I only regretted it from about 10km to 8km out of The Hague, when the rain was the hardest and I was the wettest.)
The route back was entirely different, because it was all fields and cows. A delightful look at the Dutch landscape. I was also amused to see the bikepath ran along a canal with the train on the other side, showing off a history of transportation. And pretty soon the kms really began to disappear under my tires (much faster than miles!)
I should note the bike paths were all A-MAY-ZING. Well-signed. Contiguous. Mostly bike boulevards (meaning two lanes, one each direction, separated from the street), sometimes running along a street, but sometimes just heading off on their own. The only disconcerting thing is that scooters get to use those same paths. A couple of times they made me jump when they rushed past me. But that's probably just me: I hear a scooter and assume it's out on the street.
Besides the rain adventure on the way back (lightening up as I got closer to the Hague), I also got the adventure that my phone battery was running low. That has been a problem on a few of my outings. Though it's a pretty new phone, it just doesn't have enough oomph to last a whole day out.
This was particularly notable because I needed the phone to return the Donkey Republic bike! So as it was getting low, I was trying to find a return spot, and also one that was close enough to the center of The Hague that I wouldn't mind walking. And then the phone started draining really fast on the bottom 10%, which I've had happen more than once. I finally pulled into the Den Hague Laan v NOI train station (whatever that means) and was racing to find the return spot as my percentages ticked down. I managed to get it locked and returned! Whew! And 100 yards later my phone died.
One last adventure: I'd somehow gotten turned around a few times trying to find that return spot. (I'd actually been aiming for the Haagse Bos and somehow ended up going parallel to it!). And now I needed to get back to the hotel without a phone!
Spoiler: reader, I did. I actually got turned around a few more times (or stayed turned around) but eventually I started finding signing for Den Haag Centraal, which is the central train station. I followed those, walked through the station from the back, and came out to the front that I'd seen before. From there I was able to catch a tram home.
Not wanting to fight with finding an appropriate restaurant again, I grabbed some dinner from the local market. They had Cheese & Onion chips! Mmm!
And now the RWOT workshop starts tonight, with our poster session.