Becca's boss was travelling, and his wife was going stir crazy, so we "planned" a trip with her to a neighboring town, as a little touristy jaunt (our version of "planning" just being repeatedly asking each other where we wanted to go until we just gave up and randomly picked). We ended up going to a little town a bit outside Frankfurt called Rüdesheim am Rhein, a cute little winemaking town. We wandered around for a couple of hours, had lunch, and took the train and bus back home. Becca's boss and his wife live in the same town as we do, so we ride the same buses, subways, and trams all the way home when we do touristy stuff together.
Speaking of Becca's boss's wife: I've noticed that she's made a few different appearances in the blog (and will undoubtedly make many future appearances), but she's a bit shy and would prefer to go by an alias rather than her real name. In the future, I shall refer to her as "K," short for "Karen". She's a delightful person, and should in no way be thought to have the stereotypical "Karen" personality, and her name isn't "Karen", but it amuses me to periodically harass her (by proxy) simply by referring to her with that letter. Honestly, she'll probably make me change it, but for now..... she's K.
And now, back to your normally scheduled blog post.
So Becca's job over here is actually to provide support for two offices, the office in Frankfurt and the one in The Hague, in The Netherlands. Both offices have a big inspection coming up, and she needed to visit the office in The Hague to go over all of the paperwork, so she timed it so that Cori and I could go as well.
We were looking at train tickets, and my frustration level was rising... there wasn't a direct train - all of them had connections, and some of the times were quite tight. The fewer connections, the higher the price. Taking all of that into account, I did some research, and found that there's a bus line that goes from here to there, with only one connection - a 45 minute layover. The return trip would be direct. The price was quite attractive (about a third of the cost), and only about 2 hours longer each way - that seemed like a fair tradeoff to me. I ran it by the boss, and she okayed it, so I booked it.
As our trip approached, I got an email from the bus company telling me that the bus from Frankfurt to Amsterdam was cancelled - they thankfully kept our ride from Amsterdam to The Hague though (the segment after our layover), for some odd reason.
I cancelled the whole trip there (keeping our return), and we went up to the train station one afternoon to just buy them from one of the kiosks up there - hoping that'd be simpler. It was... kinda. We ended up with tickets with short layovers. Ugh.
We took a bus and metro to the main train station Monday morning and got onto our train (and into our reserved seats) with no issues. For a couple of the connections, we had to run between trains, but we made it okay. We wandered the streets of The Hague until we found our hotel, and found out that because of Becca's status with Hilton, we'd been upgraded to a King Suite room - a big bedroom with a king size bed, and a second room (with its own bathroom) that they rolled a twin size into for Cori. Score!
I must share about our shower - it was a double shower, with a connecting area between them. Picture two standard sized stalls, with an additional two feet between them - so extra wide. Each end had one of the big rain type showerheads, and one of the handheld wands mounted on a vertical bar, so you could adjust the height and angle. The first night, I found that if I turned the rain head on in one end, and the handheld wand in the other, and positioned the wand just right, I could effectively get flooded from both directions at the same time, with different temperature water if I wanted. I want one of these showers - but I think they're only for rich people. I don't know if I rate one of these in real life.
During the day... I'd get up with Becca and we'd go down to breakfast in the attached restaurant (Cori told us that she'd rather sleep), then we'd go back upstairs and Becca would get ready and go to work. Different days, Cori and I would do different things... the only thing that was a requirement for me was the Escher museum, so Cori and I went there on Tuesday afternoon. The other days, we putzed around, sometimes went out and found stuff to eat, sometimes explored. When Becca got home, we'd figure out what we wanted to do for dinner; one night, we found a Japanese restaurant, one night an Italian restaurant.
One afternoon, Becca got off early, so we took a tram over to the beach (our hotel was about a 20 minute tram ride to the North Sea). We wandered along the boardwalk area for a couple of hours. There's a double-decker pier (with all of the normal beachy stores on it) that has a huge ferris wheel out at the end (with air-conditioned, enclosed cars). We took a ride on that, took a bunch of pics. Got dinner at a restaurant on the beach then walked around some more. Took a tram back to the hotel.
Let's talk about public transportation for a second. Sounds boring, but stay with me here. Public transportation over here is a lot more prevalent than in the states; cheap, easy, and convenient. For our trips in Germany, they've got a special running right now where you buy a ticket for €9, and you can ride any kind of public transport except the high speed rail for free. There's no scanning your ticket or showing it to the driver (or conductor) - it's basically on the honor system. At any point, they can ask to see it, but on all of our trips on local transport, we've only had to show them once (ironically, it was on the train back from Rüdesheim with K). If you don't have one and you get carded, it's a €60 fine - I don't know how the fines work, because I've always got my ticket with me. Hopefully, I'll get through the entire tour here without having to find out how the fines work.
The transit system in The Netherlands works in a similar fashion, but you can buy a ticket for a specific amount of time, with the default being 2 hours for €4. That's for single trips. If you live there, you can buy a card to use with money stored on it, where you scan your card when you get on the tram and it debits the card for the right amount of money. We bought timed tickets on the way there, then bought an additional set on the way back. On the tram on the way back, some transit officers got on board the tram and checked everyone's tickets, ending up at the back of the tram. The tram stopped, and more people got on, but one guy who got on had trouble getting his card to scan - evidently, he didn't have enough loaded on it for his trip. He glanced around the tram and saw the transit officers, so he beelined up to the front of the tram, planning on getting off on the next stop. I don't know what the officers saw, but they immediately followed him up there, and blocked him from getting off the tram. When we got off a few stops later, they were all still deep in conversation. I suspect that interaction didn't go well for him.
Friday morning, we got up, had breakfast, then headed out to catch our bus home at 10:40. The train/bus station was about a half hour walk from the hotel, so we meandered over there with enough time to get some food and drinks for the trip.
The bus left on time, but with a traffic jam outside of Düsseldorf and an accident about 20 miles outside of Frankfurt, we ended up being on the bus for around 10 hours. I actually didn't have any issues with taking the bus, while Becca and Cori weren't the biggest fans. I had downloaded some stuff to watch, so I was fine. The girls just stared out the window and time seemed to drag for them. We ended up having to wait for about a half hour for the bus home - I stopped at the store once we got to town and picked up some pizzas to throw in the oven for dinner.
So... that was our trip to The Hague. Becca will have to go back there occasionally, and I'll undoubtedly accompany her on some of her other trips there too, but we thought it'd be nice to give Cori an opportunity to visit there while she's in town.
Till next time!
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