Day 92: Den Haag

On Tuesday I decided to visit The Hague(Den Haag, 's Gravenhage) in the afternoon, and then attend the Weekly CS meeting that takes place in Den Haag. I had for my tour guide a friend I had met through CS. It was an interesting tour, I was able to see all the main sites. However, I am now able to say, I'm very glad I don't live in that city. In my opinion it's not very nice at all. At least compared to the other major Dutch cities I've been to: Rotterdam, Amsterdam, and Utrecht. I'm not quite sure what it was about the city. Maybe it was the architecture, maybe it was something else, but it just didn't have a very nice feeling to it. It doesn't help that one of the main stations, Holland Spoor (HS), and the one I arrived at, seems to be in the middle of the ghetto area of the city.
Here's a picture of the city centre. Apparently all these tall buildings are government buildings:
The Peace Palace built just before the First World War. I think it's now home to some International Court. The Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia was around the corner.

In the Binnenhof where the First and Second Chamber of the Dutch parliament are located. Here's a tv news crew maybe?
The outside of the Binnenhof.

The Prime Minister's office, supposedly...

As we left the Parliament, we came across a motorcade. We didn't recognize anyone, but then neither of us are really familiar with Dutch politicians...
The heavily fortified American embassy, with it's own elevated dutch police station:
After our tour we went to a bar called The Pas for the CS meeting. It was a nice place with a nice atmosphere. Really slow service though... Hard decision too on what to have to drink, they had around 160 beers to choose from.