The Hague

I showered this morning and his shower had the strangest water flow - it was almost, but not quite mist. Definitely the smallest water streams I've used.
His toilet is pretty gross. Well, it's more very stereotypical male bachelor toilet - it smells like piss.
We headed into town around 11
We went to Burger King for brunch.
Ahhh I hate being given mayonnaise, it really irks me.
We then went and booked in for the torture tour for 1:45. We were early so we took ourselves through the very basic self guided section.
The best bits were walking through the "judging chambers" - a normal room the judges would discuss everything and then give their verdict through the window to the crowd below.
The second cool bit was all the original humiliation signs on display.
We were still early so we went to sit by the water. We watched a very determined duck/bird collecting things for his nest. He didn't stop - he dropped one thing off to his partner who took it by her mouth and went out for more.
The girl was sitting on about 5 eggs which was exciting.
This entertained me for ages.
We walked back...
We were told when buying our tickets that the tour was in Dutch but we would be given audioguides - when we arrived we were told the wonderful news everyone one our tour spoke English so the guide was going to try and do it in English. We were very pleased.
The place is called the prison gate.

He gave us a brief overview of the prison gate.
It was not built as a prison - the Bennihof castle next door was a hunting castle. Before the Hague existed the lands were great for hunting so they built a castle here next to a big river.
The gate was originally a strategical entry point. It became a prison 200 or so years later when the castle residents didn't want the criminals in the castle dungeons anymore so they were moved.
The prison then worked for 400 years. Up until the 1850's (I think) only in 1924 was the river moved back so that tram lines and things could be layed down.
This was when the gate, once so important, became irrelevant.
You can't tell outside the significance the gate must have had once.
The first room he took us to was a jail cell for poor people. He explained the conditions.
The one cell held 15 - 20 people as they awaited there sentence.
I found it interested to note that being in Jail was never a given punishment. It was only ever used when awaiting you sentence of either humiliation, corporal or capital punishment.
The cell had no light and you stayed in the clothes you came in which ranged from 2 weeks to 6 months.
They gave them water but the water was from the lake that the toilet was connected to..
There was no glass on the windows so during winter they would have been freezing.

The best room was where the rich stayed if they were accused.
It was laughable the difference. They were allowed to bring their own furniture from home, order food and expensive wines, buy firewood for the fireplace, candles so they could work during the night and all sorts of other creature comforts.
The room played host to one of the most famous and dark injustices of Holland apparently.
I will find out there names later but story goes
- it was the Witt brothers.

The brothers were very unpopular politicians. (Are there any other type?)
1 brother got accused of planning an assassination of, i think, the Prince or King.
He was tortured for a confession because apparently they couldn't sentence you without one.
He never confessed so they said he could go.
Only problem was because of the torture he couldn't walk so he wrote to his other brother to come and get him.
He did. They both were in the room when the crowd outside demanded they die - they forced their way into the room and dragged them out side and killed them.
Instead of being sentenced themselves, the murderers where rewarded by the king.
It's widely accepted that this was planned by the king.
Both of the brothers portraits hung in the room.

The next room was a room containing the corporal and capital punishment items such as swords for decapitating - the blades don't have pointy ends so they are easy to identify.
They all so had a breaking rack which looked horrendous.
Apparently only men were hung, woman were strangled on a pole because if the were dropped from the gallows people would be able to see their knickers up their dresses and that was simply unacceptable and not child friendly.... HAHAHA
A very loud stereotypical American man found that very funny.
They also had the humiliation racks where you were shown off in the street. People could pee and spit on you but they couldn't hurt you.

Our guide was doing a very good job as you could tell he was uncomfortable with English but because he had to think every sentence through he took much longer than usual and we were running late - we rushed to the torture room which I'm pretty sure the red stained floor didn't come like that..
it had some grizzly looking items but because of time he skimmed over a lot.
I'm glad he did it in English and I'm appreciative but I do wish he was slightly more fluent. Oh well, I actually really enjoyed it and it was only 10€ each.
We then went over to the park to plan our next move and on the map found what looked like to be another big park.
We walked and had a hot chocolate on the way. A lady was losing her shit inside because she couldn't pay by credit card. She was talking to herself and swearing and it was very funny.
THE PARK HAD A DEER ENCLOSURE. 🦌😍
We wanted to see if we could go in so we walked around - it had a sign but it said private :(
We kept walking around past the central station - I love that on one side of the road was city and the other had a deer enclosure with such unkept forests. It's so beautiful and different from the staged botanical garden style parks.
On our walk we passed a lot of ducks and geese.
We enjoyed deer spotting. I've looked up many "what to do in The Hague" websites and non of them have mentioned the deer park - ludicrous.

This app is so annoying. I had to re write half of this entry because if I turn my phone on the side it malfunctions and doesn't save it -.-
It's happened a few times.
The 2nd time I write it is never as good and misses a lot of detail.

The Hague has this random red, blue, yellow, black and white checkered symbol everywhere. Literally everywhere.
We walked past home back to the other station to buy groceries. We have bought breakfast, lunch and dinner for tonight and tomorrow. So hopefully we can save some money.

We had a huge nap.
We had a bread roll before going to sleep but now random people are in the house and we don't want to get in the way by making dinner.
I guess we will go without haha.

It's nearly 1am so I said I wanted to go to bed. Wills response

" yeah no worries, I'm just watching this video, 8 amazing balloon tricks, then we can go to bed"
Important stuff👍🏼

Forgot to write on our way home we walked down their red light district street - can't wait to go to the Amsterdam one but this one was pretty funny too. I mean this with love..... but goodness most of the girls were so damn ugly. Like noticeably so.
Fake drawn on moles and coloured eye brows. Ew lol
They all looked so cranky ha.Read more