Ken@Japan

The Capital of the Netherlands is Amsterdam but the governmental buildings including the Royal Residence is based in The Hague or Den Haag, the third largest city in the nation. In Amsterdam museum I visited on Day 2, I realized that some of the masterpieces by Rembrandt and Vermeer were placed in Mauritshuis museum in The Hague. I therefore decided to visit there for…the most famous painting to me by Vermeer; Girl with a Pearl Earring. Mauritshuis, the house for Maurits Mauritshuis was originally built in the middle of 17th century as a mansion for Johan Maurits van Nassau, the stadtholder for the Dutch Colonial Empire in Brazil, who came from a collateral family of the Royal Bloodline. Years later, the huis was renovated to a museum in 1822 for art collections possessed mainly by the last Dutch stadtholder Willem V and his son, Willem I-the first King of the Netherlands. The museum itself is not that huge like the one in Amsterdam but possesses three originals by Vermeer out of the ...

One of the eye-catching sceneries in the Netherlands is a windmill. Green glass fields with windmills and goats/cows. It could be a Dutch traditional scene we would imagine. From Amsterdam, we can go to a traditional village called Zaanse Schans; it takes 30 minutes or so by train from Amsterdam Central station. Well, on my Day 4, I decided to visit there. But it wasn’t only me but also other foreign travelers to do so. Like a part of Kyoto, Zaanse Schans has been well developed for sightseeing purpose: there were souvenir shops, restaurants and attractions. The windmills, some of them were out of operation and we needed to pay an admissions for active ones. Of course, the active windmills were a lure for travelers. My first target was to experience the windmill but the clouded travelers staying in a long queue to admission made me skip the windmill first and re-route to the museum. Zaandam, the history of Dutch Indusrialization Zannse museum was not like the one in Amsterdam, where fa...

The Royal Palace was full of antique furnitures and arts. Like the museum I visited on Day 2, I spent several hours to observe the exhibitions; I needed to stay in queune for some rooms/decorations in restricted areas due to some safety reasons (they are used by the Royal familiy when they have some national guests and it should be kept safe).  The result: I really enjoyed the palace but starved when I left. The lunch time came. Traditional pancake It’s quite new knowledge for me to learn that a pancake originates in the Netherlands. Technically, the pancake-like food has been popular in Europe since the ancient Roman time, but the Dutch elevated it to its traditional cuisine called “pannenkoek”. Immigrants brought the pannenkoek on their way to America, and it was shaped to the one we see as an American pancake at present. If I hear the word “pancake”, I would rather think it is a sweat American one; it’s too sugary and sweetened. I’d visited a Hawaiian pancake café in Japan and h...