Today we decided we wanted to see the temple, so we went to Den Haag, aka The Hague to see it. That sounds like some crazy official place, but it is just the name of the city the temple is in. Of course when we left our hotel this morning we were halfway to the tram stop and then Marissa realized she had forgotten the directions to the temple. Me and John walked the rest of the way and waited for her and I kind of laughed at her for forgetting. Oh Marissa. Then like 5 seconds later I realized that I myself had forgotten something. Can you guess what? Yeah, my tram pass again. Seriously, I don't know what my deal is. But we finally got it all worked out and to Centraal station to find a train. It was a little complicated to figure out how exactly to get to Den Haag, but we got on a train for around 40 minutes to this random station called Palenstein and then walked from there to the temple.
Like many temples, you can’t really see it and then it just kind of pops right up at you. It is on a very small piece of land compared to other temples, and is just kind of right there next to the road and houses and stuff. One thing I love about the church is that when building things, especially temples, it is never really ostentatious or crazy with its architecture. They really try to just blend in with the local style. So at the temple we just took some pictures and then caught a bus to Den Haag Centraal station.
We figured that since we were in The Hague we might as well do something else, so we took a tram over to Madurodam. My boss had told me about this place from when she went to Amsterdam- it is a fun little park that has miniature buildings from all over The Netherlands. There is so much detail put into everything there, down to the little people and cars and trees and everything. Some of my favorites were the amusement park, the tulip field and the airport. It was also really fun to see buildings that we had already been to or seen around Amsterdam.
After finishing at the miniature park we just took the tram and the train back to Centraal station in Amsterdam. We had talked about going to the international courts in The Hague, but we were tired and as John said, we had already seen it (we saw the mini version). So I definitely decided they just don’t really care if you pay or not on the trams here. We bought a week pass which is just a card that you scan when you get on and off the trams, but no one enforces anything. Today at one point we got on a tram in Den Haag (so our travel passes didn’t cover it) and bought tickets, and the driver just seemed so confused that we would bother to buy a ticket. Whatever. From Centraal station we took yet another tram. At one point we got off to go to a store, and afterwards while we were waiting for the tram again this lady started talking to us in Dutch. When she realized we only speak English she spoke in English (they all do here) and we chatted for a minute. She then asked if we were tourists, and if we were from England. We said no, we are from America. She was surprised by that, and said we sounded different and more sophisticated than most Americans she has heard. That was a pretty sweet compliment- she thought we were British! We pretty much did nothing the rest of the day, we watched a movie, I blogged, we chatted with Laura, just relaxed. None of us are really into the night life, which is ok with me.
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