We were very sad to say good-bye to Nana after having here just a couple of blocks away in the neighborhood for a month.  Before she left she took each of the boys out for a special afternoon.  Nana and William went to a children’s puppet theater.  William loved the show.  It was a funny story about a raccoon, a mole and an orangutang who go on a journey with a mysterious package.  Henry and Nana went to the aquarium on the beach, where Henry got a new friend: sea horse.

Sir Henry and Sea Horse

As a bonus, whoever wasn’t with Nana got to go somewhere with Daddy.  Henry and Daddy went downtown The Hague to see an outdoor exhibit of spectacular nature photographs.  William and Daddy had to go on an errand to replace a broken light fixture, but fortunately for them they had to go through the beautiful city of Haarlem to do it.  Haarlem has a medieval market place and a very interesting train station.

William in the Haarlem Station

On Sunday we took the tram downtown to the antiques market on the Korte Voorhout.  Nana treated us all to a carriage ride that took us past the Queen’s Nordeinde Palace all the way to the Peace Palace and back.  It’s definitely the way to tour the city on a hot day.

Look, the Queen's Palace!

Each of the boys had 2 euros to spend at the antiques market.  It was hard to decide.  Henry bought a new model car with doors that open and William bought a very old, heavy key.

Our Carriage

The Korte Voorhout forms an L with the Lange Voorhout, where there is an exhibit of sculptures by Manolos.  Some of them are women wearing wide, 18th century style skirts.  We stopped for ice cream in front of the bust of a lady wearing butterflies in her hair.

In the Sculpture Garden

We live near a big park with a great play ground, a famous rose garden and a midget golf course.  Our Dutch friend Maarten used to play there when he was a boy, so he came to Den Haag to play with us.   The course hasn’t changed at all since he was a boy, except that the shack burned down last week.   We had to wait while the owner went to buy more golf balls.

Golf with Maarten

This is the third time we’ve played there, but that volcano is still giving us grief.

Victory Dance for Maarten

We had to give up on waiting for a sunny day to the beach and went on Sunday despite the heavy wind off the North Sea.  It didn’t stop us from having fun!

Aunt Elizabeth Helping us Dig

Bella got right to work on a giant hole.  Aunt Elizabeth helped William dig.  Henry made a trap for sea foam close to the water.  There was a lot of sea foam because of the weeks of wind we’ve had.

Deep Holes

Naturally all that digging made us hungry so we introduced Bella and Aunt Elizabeth to our favorite “strand pavilioen”, or restaurant built right on the beach.   There’s a whole row of restaurants that sprang up on the sand in May.  They’ll be packed away for the winter in late September.  We like the Bora Bora because it’s colorful, the kitchen is in an old school bus and the food’s good.

Lunching at the Bora Bora

After lunch we walked along the year-round boulevard and had a ride on the beautiful antique carousel.

William Rides the Carousel

The Train was Full

We had quite the adventure on the train hide home from Maastricht to The Hague.   We missed the train we wanted from the castle to Maastricht, so we had to run for the train to The Hague.   The train was full because it was rush hour.  We found a seat for Nana but they rest of us were in the hallway.  So the boys went to stand by Nana and at the next stop, Aunt Elizabeth, Bella and Mommy took our three suitcases and six other bags along the platform to another carriage.  Bella and Aunt Elizabeth found two seats and Mommy went back down the train to get us.  Ironically, many people had left our carriage and we had four seats together all to ourselves.  So Mommy went to get our picnic dinner from Aunt Elizabeth.

In Eindhoven we had two minutes to get off our train, walk across the platform, and get on the train to The Hague.  Mommy went to help Aunt Elizabeth and Bella with the luggage.  We stayed with Nana.  The conductor was blowing his whistle as we got on one end of a carriage and Mommy was tossing suitcases onto the other end of it.  But we found seats all together and had a calm ride the rest of the way.

Aunt Elizabeth and Mommy took us to a castle in the afternoon.  We had to walk a long way from the train station, but when we got there there were fun medieval games to play in the courtyard.  There were bowling games and ring tossing games and stilts.  The rooms in the castle were set up the way they were in the 18th century with food on the table even.

We climbed down the winding stairs of the thirteenth-century circular tower to see the dungeon and then we climbed all the way up to the top to see where the falcons lived.

In the castle eeryie

Then we went outside to see an amazing sandsculpture exhibit.  There were castles on mountain tops, battles, medieval markets, 18th century ballrooms and a joust.  They use glue to keep the sand in place.

The real castle and a sand joust

The next morning in Maastricht we went to the market and to see the Roman ruins.  Then Nana took us on a tourist train tour of Maastricht.  We saw more of the walls and the place where d’Artagnan died, but we all got just a little bit sea sick.

At the Maastricht Market

After Flip and Daddy dropped us off at the tram stop, we took a long train ride to Maastricht to meet Nana, Aunt Elizabeth and our cousin Bella.  After we arrived at the train station we walked across the bridge that Opa used to cross everyday when he was a boy and through the center of town.  But before we got to the bridge we stopped at the best chocolate shop ever.

We met Nana at the hotel and then we went for a walk to see the old medieval walls of Maastricht.  Aunt Elizabeth had a picnic for us, so we ate on the walls.  We also found several cannons to sit on.

Defenders of Maastricht

Nana took us to see our great-grandmother’s favorite church – Onze Lieve Vrouw.  The statue of Our Lady is very beautiful.

We had a very delicious dinner outside on the Vrijthof where we could hear the bells pealing every quarter hour.  First we had fresh ravioli then we had steak with the best spinach ever and the best button mushrooms ever.   But the dessert was even better – soft cream puffs filled with chocolate mousse and covered in an Italian merengue that tasted like fresh marshmallow sauce.

Dinner al fresco on the Vrijthof