Dan Haag

Saturday´s weather was pretty gross, so I went with my hosts to their lovely parents´ home in The Hague, the goverment center of Holland, about an hour from Amsterdam. It is just as pretty as Amsterdam, but in a more Baroque style.  After a coffee we went for a bike ride where I saw all of Holland... literally!  We went to Madurodam, which is an insanely awesome and kitchsy tourist spot that has miniatures of the sights of Holland.  The details in this place are amazing- the 4`` cars have license plates, the 3 inch people have different expressions, and the models of the airports and Cathedrals have moving aspects!  I think my favorite model was of a summer festival- it had music playing and half the figurines in the crowd were actually dancing.

Breuklen!

That night we went to the girls´ parents´ Italian restaurant and I met a few of their super nice friends.  The food was delicious...I had mushroom risotto with truffles and almost died.  This is a good place to interject that everyone here speaks english, which has made this trip that much nicer and obviously, easier.

The next day we had a lazy morning involving a large breakfast and a stroll around the Parliament, not far from the house.  The weather on Sunday was significantly better.  Unfortunately my camera was dead, so I can´t show the magic of the Hague, but try and imagine an immaculately maintained few hundred year old Parliament building surrounded by a moat and a symmetrically planted tree lined path.  Now imagine SWANS floating in said moat and sunshine peaking through the turrets of the building.  It was actually magical. 

Sunday afternoon I went for a long bike ride back in Amsterdam and visited the Van Gogh Museum.  Then Dani and I went out for a tasty pizza dinner and I finally saw the King´s Speech.  A pretty excellent weekend if I do say so myself.