De Haagse Markt

The weather these past few days has been very nice, as the rain has stayed away. Today was probably the sunniest day we've seen in The Hague, and the temperature in the afternoon was nearly 20°.

Seeing as how it was so lovely, Ross & I and everyone else in The Hague decided to check out de Haagse Markt, an open air market held every Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday. The website is here, and I encourage you to all visit it and enjoy it's ambiance. Supposedly every Dutch city has a market, and they're known for their bargains.

The markt covers an area about the size of two city blocks, and it is filled with tents adorned with all kinds of treasure. It was packed! Most of the time, we were standing shoulder to shoulder in a mass of people.

There was much more stuff at de Haagse Markt than either of us expected. You could find nearly everything you can imagine: clothes, shoes, boots, jewelry, meat, electronics, boots, furniture, cheese, health and beauty supplies, boots, bike accessories, fruits and veggies, flowers, bottle openers, bathing suits, boots, cameras, candy, fabric--and above all--more boots. Most of this stuff was very cheap and junky. The stuff that wasn't cheap and junky appeared to be stolen. It was kind of like one gigantic dollar store!

Some booths were set up like stores that you went inside, but most were displayed like carnival games with the seller on one side, and you had to point to what you wanted. I enjoyed watching a woman indicating to a seller what size of underwear she wears.

Some of the tents were like a garage sale, and had people selling their old crap at them. These tents didn't smell so good. I took note of the shortsighted spacial planning of a tent that sold dvds: the "adult" section was directly beside the children's.

The abundance of items for sale was quite astonishing. Here is just one of the multiple fish sellers. I have never seen so much vis (fish) in my life. You can't tell from this photo, but the smell of this section was awful, and there were flies aplenty.


And of course, there wasn't any shortage of greasy food stands. The Dutch do love their patats (French Fries), eaten with your choice of mayo, curry sauce, or peanut sauce. I'd like to shake the hand of the man who thought of eating peanut butter with French Fries.


We bought some kaas, zonnebloemen (sunflowers), some spinach and some soap. Nothing too exciting, but now we have an idea of the available inventory at de Haagse Markt.