The Hague
Enjoy traversing the downtown core. Visit the palace garden ("Paleis Noordeinde" or 'palace north-end' ) which is a lovely tiny park in between the Royal Stables and the palace. Frederik Hendrik, the son of William of Orange, had the gardens landscaped for his mother at the beginning of the seventeenth century.
The palace building has been home to the Dutch Royalty from at least 1609. The building you see today was restored in 1984 after a fire in 1948. The design of the main building and wings - the "H" shape - dates from 1640.
Queen Emma preferred Lange Voorhout Palace to Palace Noordeinde. Her daughter, Queen Wilhemina, liked Palace Noordeinde and used it until the German invasion of 1940. Her successor, Queen Juliana, favoured Soestdijk Palace, but the current Dutch King Willem-Alexander uses Noordeinde Palace as his office.
Palace "Lange Voorhout" today functions as the Escher Museum which holds over 120 prints of the Dutch artist Escher (1898-1972).
The Escher museum is highly recommended, both because of the art and because it is located in a former palace and the rooms are beautiful. Queen Emma bought the stately house in 1896. She used it as a winter palace from March 1901 until her death in March 1934.
The "Binnen hof" is the seat of the Dutch parliament and a beautiful building. On the north-west side of the building is the "Hof vijver" or court pond with a fountain and friendly ducks.
Maurits-huis, a 17th century residence of Count John Maurice of Nassau, on the north-east side on the Binnenhof, is a museum that holds - among many others - Johannes Vermeer's "Girl with a Pearl Earring".
If you have the opportunity, try to meet the sea at sundown at Scheveningen Beach.
You can see the sea based wind mills in the distance and with each wave that comes in, the sun sinks a bit more with the colours leaking into the water.
And as the sun sets, walk north along the wet sand to a line of small boardwalk restaurants and patios .
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