The North Sea Beach for the Little Nephews

This post is specifically for the little nephews.  Everyone else can pretty much ignore it.  The Netherlands has a perennial problem with having her beaches washed away by the Sea.  I guess this is probably a problem for a lot of beaches but it is especially problematic here.  The response is to ship in sand and rebuild the beaches.  I guess they rebuild them every year, over the slow winter season.  When I went, there was probably a three-foot drop-off between where they had put in the new sand and where they hadn't.  They had a half-dozen bulldozers out moving the sand around and getting ready for the summer.  It was pretty interesting to watch, actually.  Well, being the good Auntie that I am, I took some videos, just for the little nephews (welcome to the "little nephews" group, adorable baby Otis!)

These are videos of three of the different bulldozers which were helping to rebuild the North Sea beach at Den Haag.

They made lots of beepy noises, pushed lots of sand, and one of them drove really fast.

Just for you guys!

The North Sea

After I got done with the Peace Palace, I decided to go see the North Sea.  Because it was pretty close and sounded pretty nifty.  It was big and cold and gray and cold and misty and cold and pretty nifty.  For the record, the last time I was at the beach was when I went to Virginia Beach with Grace and Jael a few years ago over Easter weekend.  As I recall, that trip was also quite, quite cold.
I walked out along the beach for quite a ways, just for fun and to see what things are like out there, starting out from the lower left little blue bubble and going along to the upper right little blue bubble.  Since it was January, it wasn't too busy, although there were a few people and a few animals out.  There were some couples out walking.




And lots of dogs.  While I was there, someone came with her two gorgeous Red Setters who really seemed to enjoy running free on the beach.  There was a really huge dog there early, apparently.  Just look at the size of these paw prints!

And people also were out riding horses on the beach as well.  Actually, there seem to be an inordinate number of horses in Dutch cities.  In fact, while I was waiting for the tram near the Peace Palace, in the middle of the city, someone rode her horse down the street right in front of me.  While I was riding the tram on the way to the Peace Palace, the tram stopped to allow a carriage pulled by four horses and accompanied by a bunch of mounted attendants to go by.

The beach is definitely set up like any beach town.  It looks a lot like a slightly less tacky Virginia Beach, although that could be a function of the fact that it is definitely the off season.

The beach front architecture is pretty spiffy, though.  If you notice the flags, you will see just how windy it was while I was there.

The beach is made of lots and lots of sea shells.  I thought of picking some up to bring back for Huldah to make earrings out of but I don't know if they would work very well.  But a lot of them were really pretty.  I imagine that it would make walking barefoot on the beach quite unpleasant.

There were a lot of larger shells as well.  I didn't know what a lot of them were but, while I was walking through the pier, they had a display of different shells and things and they identified them.  This is the American or Atlantic Jackknife or Razor Clam.  It is called that because it is very sharp and because it looks like the handle of an old fashioned razor.  It is an invasive species and apparently has had a fairly detrimental affect on the local fauna.  I think it's kind of pretty, though.  

This is the underside and top side of what I am fairly certain is a Common Swimming Crab of the family Portunoidea.  It  is a pretty little shell.  However, if you click here you can see a video of one of these little crabs swimming and it looks way to buggy and spidery for me to be really comfortable with the idea of being in the water with them.

There were neither red "swimming forbidden" nor yellow "swimming dangerous" flags out, but I wasn't very tempted.  

I did think, briefly, about taking my shoe off and sticking my toe in the North Sea, just because, but it was really, really cold.  And wet.  I decided that it sounded terrible after all.  Then I thought about running out and sticking a finger in the North Sea, just to say I had, but, as previously noted, it was really, really cold.  Also, the tide was coming in pretty enthusiastically so I was pretty sure that I wouldn't make it unscathed.

So instead, I just put my foot really, really close to the water, narrowly avoided the water, and still got pretty close to the North Sea.  I did get a little North Sea on the hem of my pants, though.

Then I walked out to the big pier.  There are a couple of restaurants in there, a casino, and loads and loads of little shops and things, most of which were closed, because of it being January.  You can see the pier pretty clearly in the map that is towards the top of this post.

The pier is really long.  I walked the whole length of it, which was kind of boring, actually.  Some of the little shops were open and had lots of touristy stuff.  Almost all of the stuff said "Holland" instead of "The Netherlands".  I suppose that this fits on things better, being shorter, but I think that it doesn't show a lot of national pride.  There were loads of wooden shoes and Delft colored kitchen magnets and loads and loads of really, really inappropriate post cards.

If you notice the dark black lines on the lower half of the pylons that support the pier, you can see just how high the tide gets when it comes in.  It comes up a long, long way.  In the picture below, you can see a guy standing on the edge of the beach, which will give you an idea as to the scale of the pier.

With the tide coming in, you could see lots of rip-tides.  It was pretty impressive.  This is a video of the tide--toward the back, you can see a big rip tide thing where the waves kind of curve around and smack each other.

For lunch, I ate a restaurant called "De Mollige Haan"or "The Chubby Chicken".  It was right on the edge of the Boardwalk so I could watch the tide come in while I had lunch.  It was really pleasant.  There weren't that many folks there but there were pillars throughout the restaurant with gas fires in them so that you could be warm and get the feeling of sitting beside a fireplace.  On the chairs that were around the tables outside, they had fuzzy red fleece blankets so that you could cuddle up while you drank your coffee.  I had the "Mollige Haan" sandwich.  It was lettuce, chicken, cheese, peaches, and mayonnaise on a roll and it was pretty much impossible to eat neatly.  I am still not sure if you were supposed to eat it with your hands or with a fork but the roll was really hard (I don't think it was very fresh) and that made it even more difficult.  The mayo wasn't like American mayo--it had a much lighter taste (not as in light but as in fluffier or less something).  It was also sweeter--kind of like it was mayonnaise mixed with whipped yogurt or something.  It was actually pretty tasty.  But it made for a fun beach trip lunch.

The Peace Palace

When I was at Den Haag I visited the Peace Palace.  The Peace Palace is the site of the International Court of Justice and the Permanent Court of Arbitration.  The International Criminal Court (where war crimes trials, such as that for Saddam Hussein, are held) is in a different building a few miles away.

This is a Wikipedia photo of the Biltmore Estate. 

The building reminded me a lot of the Biltmore Estate so when I got back, I looked it up, and they don't look all that much alike, really.  I finally decided that the similarity is because of the silhouette and all of the little window turrets all over it.  There are, however, similarities in the period in which it was constructed and in who commissioned it.

The Peace Palace was funded and built by Andrew Carnegie who was interested, at the beginning of the 20th century, in promoting international peace.  In a little historical irony, once the construction was completed, the importation of the furniture and all of the ceremonial gifts from different nations was disrupted by the beginning of World War I.

You are only able to see the Peace Palace with a reservation and a guided tour and even then you don't get to see the gardens, which are supposed to be quite beautiful, although I suppose that it doesn't make that much of a difference in January.  Security is really tight.  You have to go through a metal detector and your bag has to go through a scanner.  I waited (in what turned out to be the wrong line) to get in.  There were a whole bunch of extremely plummy English lawyers talking about the differences between Dutch lawyers and English lawyers and the incompetencies and abilities of their superiors.  It was pretty entertaining.  Then, when I got to the front of the line they said that I needed to wait and then they would make a new, special line later, for the tour.  The Palace was pretty busy as, besides the court cases that are going on, they have lots of conferences and legal courses going on.

The exterior grounds of the Palace are decorated in "Peace" themes.  There were a few benches with mosaic peace themes.

 






There is also a world peace rock garden surrounding the world peace flame.  Each of the rocks in the boarder around the circle were the gifts of different nations, presumably with rocks which are significant nationally.  


Some of the nations had really pretty agate-type rocks and marble type rocks.  They were really nice.


The U.S.  did not.  That long, rectangular, boring, inconspicuous rock is the U.S. representative.  I thought perhaps that someone had taken the U.S. rock or it had come out but I looked at it, and that is what it is supposed to look like.  I thought that it was quite disappointing.  

There were also inscriptions along all of the borders of all of the names of the nations that had signed on to a certain international peace accord.


And they had a giant plaque which you could use to find the stone of a particular nation and which explained that the flame of peace has been drug around the world to be set at different peace negotiations.


You weren't allowed to take pictures on the Palace grounds or inside the Palace, which is a shame because it was pretty beautiful.  We did have a pretty good tour guide who gave us a lot of information on the history of the Palace and on what goes on there.  There are art pieces all over the Palace which were donated by different nations.  If you click here you will go to the English language site of the Peace Palace.  You can see about the history of the building, its purpose , and other general information.  If you click on the "Pictures" tab on the left, you will go to a gallery of the Palace.  The Dutch version of the website, which you can find here, has a lot more pictures than the English site.  If you click on the links under the "Gebow" (Building) label, you will see lots of pictures of the interior.

One of the things which the U.S. sent is the ceiling of the Smaller Court of Arbitration (you can see the picture here).  I forget what wood was used but it is made in 8 layers with a dovetail design which uses the weight of the ceiling itself to hold it together.  It contains no glue, pegs, or nails.  Which, when you look up at it, is kind of nerve racking.  But it hasn't fallen in in 80 some years, so I guess that it is pretty safe.

The interior--stairs, walls, floors, pillars--is designed with 127 different types of marble from all over the world, although they were all donated by Italy.  It is amazing the variety in colors and designs in the natural marble and it makes a pretty striking layout.  If you click on this you can see the entry hall.  All of the designs on the floor are made with various sizes and shapes of different kinds of marble and it is really beautiful.  If you notice the stairs, they are modeled on some famous stairs somewhere else, but on a smaller scale.  To make the stairs look right, on the smaller scale, they are made in gradations.  The lowest stair is convex and the top stair is concave and the stairs in between gradually change their shapes to make the stairs look longer, deeper, and wider than they really are.  It is really interesting and, despite what you might fear, it doesn't seem to make the stairs dangerous.  If you click here, you can see some of the pillars.  The large "Russian Vase", which you can see here, is made out of jasper, which looks kind of like a dark green, veined marble.  I guess that I had never really seen jasper before but, having seen it now, I could see where a vision of a city walled in jasper, clear as crystal would be a pretty affecting sight.

When we were in the Court of International Justice, the guide mentioned that this was where states (as in, nation-states) could sue one another over treaty violations and international wrongs as a means of limiting the need for war-like disputes over those kinds of things.  That is where things went bad:

"So", said one guy, "this is where you could sue the U.S. over Iraq?"
"Well, " said the guide,
"Yeah," said a lady, "that would be great.  Somebody should do that."
"Yeah," said a British lady (oh, the irony), "why hasn't anyone done that?"
"Well," said the guide, "most of the cases that come here are for treaty violations, and that isn't really the issue in the Iraq case, probably."
"But you could do it, couldn't you?" said the first guy.
"Well, yes" said the guide.

Then one of the Chinese tourists asked a question about something else.

"Why haven't they then?" asked the first guy.
"Well, the U.S. has a permanent member on the court, so they can veto the acceptance of the case."  Said the guide.
"So they can block getting sued?!!" said the guy "That is so stupid."
"Yeah," said the British lady, "that is soooo stupid!"
"Why would they ever let the U.S. have a permanent member? Ugh, that is terrible."
"Can't we just get rid of them and kick them off."
"Oh, it makes me so mad."

It continued pretty much like that until the guide made everybody leave the room and started talking about the stained glass windows and the poor Chinese tourist never got his question answered.

I think the take away from this story is that, whatever the news media seems to think, everyone else in the world would be just as happy if the U.S. adopted a Ron Paul foreign policy.  (Or else they were just a bunch of grumpy folks who were unhappy with the U.S., but I think that it still works.)