A brief escape to The Hague

The Hague is the third largest city in The Netherlands, is the seat of government (although not the capital city), and has an interesting Indonesian influence. The city has quite a few cultural points of interest for tourism, in particular museums, but otherwise it seems to try to compete with Brussels for the number of international organisations homed there.

As the only bit of tourism for the entire weekend, we wound up having a look at the town hall, designed by Richard Meier. I've had an interest in architecture for a few years now, and Meier's work is interesting because of his obsession with pure white and rational designs. Interestingly, he also designed many buildings within SimCity 4!

We quickly discovered a live nativity scene taking place in the town hall, complete with live actors and animals. The only thing that was fake was Jesus, but that makes sense to me!

This single event may have triggered the weekend of Christmas shopping that then ensued.

Saturday night was spent in a comfortable restaurant, where we were unwittingly educated by a representative from Johnnie Walker. It seems that the Dutch are not purchasing their Black Label blended whisky because of its high price tag, so they're trying an education program to try to increase sales! I will try to avoid mentioning a particular trait of the Dutch stereotype…

I'm not much of a whisky person, so I didn't realise Johnnie Walker Black Label was a combination of more than forty whiskies to obtain a particular flavour. We agreed to participate mostly out of boredom, and slightly out of curiosity.

We were presented with six strong malt whiskeys and asked to comment on particular nuances of their flavours, such as oak, smoke, or fruit. After each sampling, we were explained about the origin of each particular whisky, along with how it was made, in order to give a background as to why it has that flavour. Have a look at the tasting notes on Dr. Whisky's blog.

Finally, we were given a very tiny sample of Black Label itself so we could then isolate particular flavours to highlight the quality of the blend. It was an interesting marketing program to participate in, and apparently it's working for them if I'm talking about it here. Then again, I haven't bought any of their whisky!

It's been a very relaxing weekend, despite getting my Christmas shopping done, but well worth the escape. I've always thought the Thalys was a fantastic service, and it's amazingly easy to “city-hop” quickly with no stress from all that airport security crap.

I really should be doing more of this.