After a short train ride we arrived in Gouda. We were met by George whom we had met in The Philippines. He loves to travel and works in real estate and keeps busy diving, playing the guitar, and speed skating on ice. He was very kind to let us hang out in place. The first night we arrived was Sinta Klaas day and he had to dress up as Black Pieter and visit his family and it is traditional to exchange presents on December 6th, so he headed off to do that while we looked around the canals where he lives. Usually Sinta Klaas is celebrated for young children.
Gouda is famous for its cheese so we were able to eat a lot of that.
George took us for a drive to Leiden, Rembrandt's birthplace and a centre for medical research. While there we visited the Corpus exhibition. The building has a 35 metre high human structure and you enter his or her kneee and take a tour through the body coming out in the brain. There are lots of interactive displays to while away the time on each floor on your way down.
It gets dark so early here so by the time we got to Scheveningen, the main beach at Den Haag, it was starting to get dark. There were still people walking on the beach and along the pier with their children and dogs even as the sun was setting. The area is wall to wall hotels and the uglymodern apartments overshadow the old beautiful original buildings like this one. 
9 million visitors come here each year.
9 million visitors come here each year.We drove by the International Court of Justice and thought of Radovan Karadzic, who was arrested in Belgrade while we were there, facing the lawyers here. The Hague is the Dutch seat of government while Amsterdam is the capital. Even at night the Parliament buidings were also impressive.
A short drive away and we were in Rotterdam where George wanted to take us to the Euromast tower to see the lights of the city but it was fully booked for a function so we were not able to go up the tower. Maybe the recession has not hit the Netherlands yet. Rotterdam is Europe's largest port and the city was bombed flat in World War 2.
We then went onto have an absolutely delicious meal at the Hotel New York . It was the former headquarters of the Holland-America passenger shipping line.
While George was working we walked about the old city. Gouda is famous for cheese and smoking pipes. The 15th century town hall in the marketplace was well preserved and still in use.
The Waag, or weigh station was where goods were weighed and then taxes charged. It is now an historic building.
The area around Gouda is mostly peat and bog. The land that has been drained has many drainage canals intersecting the pastureland (they are also shown on the maps). The canals also serve as 'fences' for the grazing sheep. George said he hasn't been able to skate on the canals since 1996 (it hasn't been cold enough to freeze the deep water) but when they do freeze over he skates a 300km circuit through 11 villages. Along the route farmers sell hot drinks and soup to all the skaters. It would have been so nice to be able to try this but other than a few snow flurries it did not freeze.
