3rd of September

Den Haag Day 2!  Did we wake up nice an early to catch a train? Yes we did!  Did we manage to get to the museums we wanted to go to in a timely manner?  Yes we did!  Did I manage to completely underdress and freeze to death?  Yes I did.  For whatever poorly thoughtout reason, primarily because I had run out of other shirts, and wasn't terribly inclined to dig into my Istanbul long sleeves, I determined that this day would be the best one to wear the only tank top I had brought with me in case of warmer weather.  Well, it was the wrong day.   I enjoyed the Escher museum very much, and the Panorama Mesdag was interesting, but it was so cold.  We got some french onion soup for lunch that was quite tasty and that helped a bit (so did the beer) but there was only so much my light knit jersey sweater could do.  I ended up pinning the drop neckline closer to my neck with a safety pin, I was that cold. 

Finally, we escaped Den Haag and made our way to Delft, buying ourselves sandwich makings at the trainstation.  Its a very pretty place, and once I found something to draw, I sat down and was enthralled.  Scott gave me his jacket for warmth (that space heater) and went off in search of pasteries and returned some time later with some tasty carrot cake for me and a rocky road like confection for himself.  As I painted away happily, he watched the incoming storm clouds with trepidation.  Eventually, it started thundering and he began to mention maybe getting undercover, reminding me that while the sky wasn't that bad from where I was sitting, the clouds behind me were dead ominous.  When the first large raindrops began to splash down, I quickly closed the sketchbook and packed everything away, but by then it was too late.  The frantic run through the town to reach the train station again saw us completely poured on, drenched to the bone.  When we took refuge in a bus stop, we realized that it was hailing.  Hailing.  And I was wearing sandals.  In the next lull we made it to the station, and from there we realized that if we had just taken cover in the city center for ten to fifteen minutes we would have missed the whole thing.  Sadly it was still windy, so of course now I was colder than ever.  One short but shivery train ride home and we arrived in what became an equally damp Amsterdam.  When we reached the hostel, we were soaked and miserable, so we took warm showers to clean off/warm up, and then we crashed, literally, and fell sound asleep.

2nd of September

Den Haag Day!  We hopped on an early train with the (absurd) goal of hitting the Rijksmuseum, Escher Museum and a nifty Panorama before heading to spend the rest of the day in Delft.  Yes, we literally thought we could accomplish all this.  What ACTUALLY ended up happening is hitting the Rijksmuseum, having to take short catnaps in the last stretch of rooms (there weren't even that many) and stumbling out, feeling very much so like not visiting any other museums that day, not that they had that much time left to be open anyway.  Most of the problem probably stemmed from being awakened the previous night at 4:30am by a constant cacophony of clatterupstairs-knockknockknock-doorslungopen-doorslamshut-trompdownstairs.  Eventually, we ended up wandering around the city, looking at the outside of churches since they were all closed, and traversing the streets.  We even went into a huge department store housed in a really lovely interesting looking old building, though the store inside was pretty basic, though pretty high class- though maybe not for European standards.  Five stories though!  We went up all the escalators, walked around, and went back down again.  Its a nice enough place, Den Haag, but it suffers from a bit of an inferiority complex methinks because Amsterdam outshines it so much in popularity.  I did notice it seemed pretty metropolitan and cosmopolitan, in some ways more than its neighbor to the north. 

Finally, we headed back to Amsterdam, and finally crashed like we'd have liked to earlier when we were in the wrong city to do so.  Waking up late, having forgotten to set an alarm, we got the brilliant idea of going and getting fries and a belgian waffle for dinner.  Stupid idea.  Not because there was somehow a better option open at, like, 11pm, or because fries and flemish mayonnaise are nasty, because they are not, but because there was no way to distinguish the size of the portion we were ordering at the stand. We got the largest, as we were splitting it, and ended up having to throw a third of it away.  It was enormous.  When trying to sleep that night, it was impossible, because we had giant piles of fries and mayonnaise in our stomachs.