I love Amsterdam. I go every year for the galleries, the opera, the beer, the genever, the rijsttaffel, the brown cafés and, well, the fun. I’ve had many a fine time there, sometimes with and sometimes without dear Mrs Ray. It’s a top place.
I was cut to the quick, then, on hearing recently that the good burghers of Amsterdam had asked any British tourists in search of a ‘messy night’ to stay away. Admittedly, this controversial campaign is aimed chiefly at 18- to 35-year-olds on stag parties, rather than senior railcard-holders like me. But any drunk and disorderly behaviour risks a hefty fine and a criminal record – and since I’m fond of the occasional evening of great wickedness but can’t afford the fine and already have the criminal record, I decided to take my custom elsewhere. I’m not going where I’m not wanted.
So, Mrs R and I went to the Hague (Den Haag) for the weekend instead and – who’d have thought it? – had a hoot. Even a seven-hour delay on Eurostar failed to put us off, thanks largely to a couple of bottles of decent red I’d brought for the journey and the warmth of the welcome at De Basiliek, the restaurant ten minutes’ walk from Den Haag Centraal station I’d booked for lunch but in which we ended up having dinner. They could not have been nicer and plied with us excellent cocktails, fine wine and scrumptious sharing plates of rock shrimp, duck rillettes, pig’s cheeks, pumpkin ravioli, sweetbreads and sauerkraut and slow-cooked pork belly.
Our hotel, the Leonardo Royal Hotel Den Haag Promenade, a temple to 1970s style and architecture overlooking a Shell petrol station on the outskirts of town, was less successful and I wish we’d checked into the jollier, more central Hotel Indigo, housed in a former bank. We partly made up for our mistake, though, with post-prandial cocktails in Indigo’s uber-cool, 1920s speakeasy-style Gold Bar in the old vault.
Having lost a whole afternoon in town thanks to Eurostar, we hit the ground running next day and worked our socks off in pursuit of pleasure. For some reason, the Hague was never accorded city status and, often known as the largest village in Europe, it’s open and embracing and a delight to walk or cycle around, with almost 500 public parks in the wider Hague area, leafy boulevards, quaint cobbled streets, extraordinarily varied architecture and – unlike Amsterdam – just the one canal.
We hired bicycles and went gallery hopping – first to Escher in the Palace, a former royal residence devoted to the brain-frying optical illusions of M.C. Escher (this year marks the 125th anniversary of his birth); then to the Kunstmuseum, crammed with the pictures of Piet Mondriaan, the world’s largest collection of Delftware, and yet more Eschers; then to the mighty Mauritshuis itself, home to Holbeins, Rembrandts, Brueghels and Vermeers including – most famously – ‘Girl with a Pearl Earring’.
We had a glass of fizz in the grand Hotel Des Indes (next door to where Mata Hari lived and where poor Anna Pavlova died) and an excellent lunch of bloody Marys and steak tartares at Walter Benedict in the old town.
We cycled to Scheveningen with its 2km-long sandy beach, its boulevard, pier and pop-up bars and shacks and grabbed an ice-cold beer in Susie Q in the harbour to sustain us for the ride home. I didn’t quite grasp the rules of the road, but it seemed cars mainly give way to cycles, nobody wears a helmet and the only people to fear are other cyclists.
We strolled the Hague’s shopping streets and ticked off the Noordeinde Palace, the Binnenhof (Dutch parliament), the International Court of Justice, the Kloosterkerk and the Grote Kerk. We had a cracking dinner of smoked eel, fried smelt, porcini ravioli and filet mignon at Restaurant Harpoon in Oude Molstraat (the Hague’s oldest street) accompanied by a couple of bottles of Alsace-like Auxerrois from one of the islands of Zeeland, a first for both of us.
Next day, we took the 15-minute train ride to the university town of Leiden, birthplace of such artists as Rembrandt, Lucas van Leyden, Jan van Goyen and Jan Steen. We went to the Museum De Lakenhal to see the David Bailly exhibition (no, not that one, the 17th century painter who was born here), mooched along the canals and had beer and raw herring and onion baps in the outdoor food market.
Back in the Hague, we just had time to visit Van Kleef, the last remaining genever and liqueur producer in the city. Part apothecary, part laboratory, part bar, part shop, part museum, VK is a sublime spot and no mistake. We tried countless liqueurs including the limoncello/ginger Vaccine, the Parfait d’Amour-like Perfect Happiness, the salted caramel, the strong pear, the liquorice and the five-year-old genever aged in American oak. We tried them on their own and some we mixed together. I got head spins and bought a bottle of each for the journey home.
The Hague is a delight and we’ll be back in the spring to see the fabled tulip display at nearby Keukenhof. Amsterdam? Where’s Amsterdam?
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