Sean and I saw Mum off at the airport last night. She’s back to Sydney after two weeks staying with us in The Hague. I’m a little bit sad now and miss her already. My consolation is that I know that I’m expecting Dad, sister Fiona and clan to visit in September.
I’m a little bit sad and also quite a bit exhausted. Mum and I managed loads of sightseeing and exploring. We were constantly on the go. We went to museums and gardens and galleries and beaches and palaces and churches in The Hague and beyond. We went to places I’ve been to before and some I haven’t. We ate some of our favourite Dutch foods like bitterballen and appeltartje and tried some Dutch specialities for the first time like krabsalades. I even Dutchified Mum a bit by getting her on the bike for a little neighbourhood exploration ( a terrifying experience!)
Keukenhof
Our first little adventure was to Keukenhof, the largest bulb flowering park in the world where 7 million bulbs are planted every year. We caught the bus, an easy trip from The Hague to Lisse. Although our visit was towards the end of the season for tulips there were still plenty of gorgeous late flowering ones as well as rhododendrons, johnny jump ups, and in the glasshouse enormous lilies as big as dinner plates. It was really beautiful.
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| Paleis Het Loo |
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| Paleis Het Loo garden |
Paleis Het Loo or “The Woods Palace” was the summer palace of the Dutch rulers from 1686 to 1975. Stadholder William III, great grandson of William of Orange and his wife Mary II of England were the first to occupy the summer retreat in the 17th century. We hired a car to get to the palace and Sean drove the hour and a half trip from The Hague. The palace rooms are appointed with original furnishings and portrait paintings. We toured the beautiful French style garden with its embroidery patterns of box hedges and a water fountain spurting higher than that of Versailles’ fountains. There was also an exhibition to celebrate Princess Maxima’s 10 years in Holland with some of her fashionable outfits on display. The Argentinean born wife of heir to the Dutch throne Willem Alexander, has a taste for Valentino dresses and also has big feet, bigger than mine anyway. At least European size 42 I reckon, and she still looks elegant.
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| Mum cycling in Hoge Veluwe |
This is the largest national park in the Netherlands and was originally land purchased by Anton and Helene Kröller-Müller in 1909. He was a successful businessman and wanted the land for hunting grounds. She was a keen art collector and wanted a museum for her extensive art collection. So in the middle of a 5,500 hectare national park in Otterloo, is the Kröller-Müller Museum. Sean parked the car outside the park and we all jumped on the free white bicycles at the park entrance. To reach the museum, we rode a few kilometres on paths through forest and over sand dunes. Seeing Mum cycle through the national park was not so terrifying when compared with the streets of The Hague. There seemed to be few people or cars in the park and it all felt very peaceful. Once we reached the museum however, there were scores of Dutch and international visitors swarming through the exhibition.
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| Van Gogh |
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| Van Gogh self portrait |
The Kröller-Müller Museum attracts plenty of visitors with good reason. Helene Kröller-Müller’s favourite artist was Vincent Van Gogh and this museum has the world’s second largest Van Gogh collection, only surpassed by the Van Gogh family collection. But there are also works Piet Mondriaan, Monet, Pissaro, Picasso and more. Outside the museum there is an extensive sculpture garden with mountains of pink rhododendrons and some interesting sculpture pieces. How unique though: a museum in the middle of a national park!
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| Kröller-Müller Museum sculpture garden |
Amsterdam
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| Amsterdam |
In three days in Amsterdam, Mum and I visited SEVEN museums (theVan Gogh museum, Rijksmuseum, Hermitage Museum, Dutch Resistance Museum, Anne Frank Museum, Willem Van Loon Museum) plus Hortus Botanicus, the botanical gardens. The Hermitage had an exhibition on artefacts of the Russian orthodox church - plenty of silvery and golden precious stone encrusted religious objects and icons, hundreds of years old from the St Petersburg Hermitage.
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| Museum van Loon |
Museum van Loon is a large canal house on the Keizergracht, a stately private home built in 1672. The first resident was the painter Ferdinand Bol, a pupil of Rembrandt but the museum is named after the Van Loon family, the last residents of the house who occupied it from 1884. The house interior has original fabric wall-coverings, fine furniture and porcelain and numerous painted family portraits. Outside is a beautiful formal garden.
We were impressed with the Dutch Resistance Museum and were still there at closing time. In fact I had to go and escort Mum from the building before security hauled her out. One of the saddest parts of the collection were the original handwritten goodbye letters thrown from the trains heading towards the Westerbork concentration camp by Dutch Jews during Nazi occupation of Holland. The Anne Frank Museum was also very sad. There were many poignant quotes from Anne’s diary painted onto the walls of the museum, including one about her aspirations to become a journalist and writer.
We caught a tram to Delft and visited the Niewue Kerk where most of the Dutch royal family have been interred on their deaths, the Prinsenhof where Willem of Orange was assassinated and the Vermeer Centre where I took a Vermeer studio photo of Mum.
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| Mum in a Vermeer painting |
The Hague
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| Sean and Mum outside the Mauritshuis |
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| Me and Mum at Scheveningen |
We showed Mum our favourite places in The Hague from the elegant Mauritshuis museum with it’s precious art of the Dutch Golden Age, to the pub next door. We had dinner at one of the Scheveningen beach cafes as the sun was setting and visited Panorama Mesdag, an enormous panoramic painting of Scheveningen beach as it appeared the late 19th century. We walked around the parliament buildings and the Hofvifver pond, cycled (perilously) by the Peace Palace and strolled the magnificent Lange Voorhout before enjoying a string quintet performance of the New Dutch Academy in the historic Diligentia theatre.
It’s been fun to show Mum our new home in the The Hague.
And now, as I post this blog, 24 hours after she left, I think Mum is still on a plane on the way to Sydney. It’s a long long long way.
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| Scheveningen Sunset |
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