Going to the Hauge or Den Haag was for sure on the list. Two places I really really wanted to go: Madurodam and Mauritshuis which is the museum where many of Vermeer's paintings are displayed. Well, we made it to half of them.
It was a chilly, dark morning and as Madurodam was outside I was feeling nervous about it just not being fun but Tom was all in and so we packed up the car and drove for about an hour to get to Madurodam. It was snowing by the time we arrived. We bundled up in tons of layers before going to get our tickets and luckily there was enough warm clothes for everyone.
Madurodam is this amazing place with tons of miniatures of Dutch places - cathedrals, town halls, tulip fields, etc. But interspersed with that are tons interactive things for the kids to play with - you can see how much cheese you weigh, make a trade route for your ships, play soccer in a little indoor field, etc. The kids were completely entertained! It might have been snowing but whatever! Connor, surprisingly, was super thrilled with the little buildings. This cracked me up.
Here is the cool story as to why this place is even here!
Mrs B. Boon-van der Starp was a member of a foundation for the Dutch Students Sanatorium. In this sanatorium students with tuberculosis could obtain treatment, and could also study. Financial support was needed to pay for their convalescent care. Mrs Boon-van der Starp heard about Bekonscot, a miniature park in Beaconsfield, England. This park generated large profits, a large part of which was donated to a hospital in London each year.
After a meeting with Mrs Boon-van der Starp, George Maduro's parents donated the funds needed for the Madurodam project, as a memorial to their son. S.J. Bouma was appointed architect of Madurodam, and visited Bekonscot because Mrs Boon-van der Starp wanted the new park to be similar.
"The miniature city was named after George Maduro, a law student from Curaçao who fought the Nazi occupation forces as a member of the Dutch resistance and died at Dachau concentration camp in 1945. In 1946 Maduro was posthumously granted the honor of Knight 4th-class of the Military Order of William, the highest and oldest honor in the Kingdom of the Netherlands, because he had distinguished himself in the Battle of the Netherlands against German troops. His parents donated the money to start the Madurodam project."
I thought that was pretty amazing.
As a bonus, a huge nautical playground was recently opened which the kids had a complete blast in. It was a pretty awesome park. Then we went to eat lunch and bought way more food than was necessary and not a lot of people ate it which was quite lame. They had an awesome gift shop where I bought a magnet of my favorite Vermeer painting. I knew there was no way we were going to be up for going to the museum and what I wanted was for everyone to have a good day so I put that dream back up on my shelf. Some day.
We did a few more things before we left (putting out little ship fires was pretty awesome) and we kept to the 15 minute rule and left before anyone started to cry! Connor even said, "I love this place! Can we come back?!" Win!!
In the evening Connor and I stayed home and watched Nick Jr in Dutch and ate treats while Tom took the older 3 to the pool and closed the place down.
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