From the Harbour Town area, my BFFs and I walked to Palace Huis Ten Bosch, a replica of a royal palace in The Hague in the Netherlands bearing the same name.
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The actual palace, having undergone major reconstructions since it was built,
consists of a central part with two long wings spanning about 110 m from end to end. |
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| I'm pretty sure couples would love to have some photos of themselves there, right? |
The palace is basically a huge exhibition gallery. Don't forget to drop by Golden Castle where you'll be treated to the sight of gold.
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| Would you like to play a violin that costs ¥10.8 million (~S$143,232.70)? |
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| That was my first time lifting a gold bar weighing more than 12 kg. |
The most expensive item in the room, however, isn't made of gold. Here's a rare natural Burmese ruby that costs a whooping US$6 million (~S$8.48 million)!
We weren't thinking of spending too much time there until we saw the mind-blowing display of flowers. I was seriously impressed.
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| Dark purple is my most favourite colour. What's yours? |
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| Flowers are like friends, don't you think? They bring colours to your world. |
I'm not exactly sure, but I reckon that was a temporary exhibition. I love flowers, and I'm really glad I had the chance to be there at the right time.
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| Home decor idea? Such a pity that it may not be so sustainable though. |
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| No, not at a discotheque~ |
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| Tunnel of flowers! |
We'd be going back to the palace again later after nightfall. From there, we walked back to the amusement park to go to the observatory housed inside the replica of Domtoren, the tallest church tower in the Netherlands,
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| The observatory is 80 m above sea level, roughly at the 25th floor of a building. |
Enjoy the view of the amusement park from above.
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| Never had I been to an amusement park emptier than Huis Ten Bosch in early December. |
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| Fancy staying a night or two at Hotel Amsterdam (5*) inside the paid area of the amusement park? |
Our next destination would be the Adventure Park area. We decided to ride on a canal cruiser from the stop near the Domtoren.
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| Most people chose to sit inside to avoid the chilly gusts of wind. |
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I actually didn't cruise through the canals when I was in Amsterdam,
so that was to make up for it. Haha~ |
We visited only one attraction in the Adventure Park area. Care to make a wild guess of what kind of activity would we be doing?
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I wish I had the time to try Dinosaur Woods, probably something like an escape game with
the objective of finding the DNA of dinosaurs in a laboratory and get out of it. |
I'd been eyeing on The Maze, a 5-storey wooden cottage where players are supposed to find four diamonds and two Dragon Ball-like objects in the form of stamps.
Save for the fact that our movements were somewhat hindered as we were carrying backpacks, it was a truly fun experience.
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Those yellow-and-black tapes indicate the paths where you can cross.
As you can see, it involves a lot of crawling. |
The difficulty is amplified at night because some paths can be pretty dark. For me, it wasn't a wrong decision at all to visit the attraction after sunset because I love challenges.
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| That's one of the diamond stamps. |
Not surprisingly, one of the balls is located at the topmost floor of the cottage. It took us quite some time to reach our final goal.
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| Not as fanciful as expected... |
After completing the labyrinth, I purposely went to find the fake goal because I wanted to take the slide down.
Anyway, we managed to get all the stamps. You can get a discount at the nearby drink stall by showing all six upon order.
For dinner, we headed back to the Domtoren to try Sasebo style lemon steak at
De Rode Leeuw.
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| Thankfully, we only had to wait for about 10 minutes to get a table. |
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| Juicy sliced beef on a hotplate, anyone? |
After getting our stomachs filled, we walked around to enjoy the night scenery.
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| "A quiet city is a contradiction in terms. It's a thing uncanny, spectral." ~ Max Beerbohm |
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| I didn't manage to ride on the Ferris wheel. So sad... |
Titled 'Kingdom of Light', the spectacular annual winter illumination at Huis Ten Bosch is the largest of such kind in the world, featuring about 13 million lights in total.
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| Welcome to the enchanted Art Garden! |
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| I was considering of using this lovely photo as the cover image of this blog post. |
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| That's a waterfall-like projection, I suppose. |
As of end of 2019, 'Kingdom of Light' had been voted as Japan's best winter illumination for 5 years in a row.
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| What's a dragon doing there? Anyway, you can take the stairs up to its back. |
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| Lovey dovey~ |
Subsequently, we walked back to Palace Huis Ten Bosch.
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| Enjoying the night breeze~ |
We were looking forward to the musical light show at the garden.
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| In all honestly, it was pretty good, but certainly not as fantastic as expected. |
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| Don't you love the colours of the illuminated trees? |
Once it was done, we managed to catch the last part of the 3D animation projected on the facade of the palace.
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| The evil queen was eventully killed by the golden dragon. |
Subsequently, we walked back to the paid area of the theme park. Yes, I really clocked a lot of steps that day. I can't remember the exact number, but it was more than 30,000 for sure.
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| Way too pretty~ |
The now defunct Thriller City area features quite a number of horror attractions. I guess I was really lucky to be able to see it before the management decided to close it for good in early January 2020.
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| Are you into horror VR attractions? |
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| I went inside that dark haunted house. |
We happened to be in time to catch the light show there from the beginning.
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| The area would be replaced by a new one called Fantasy City of Light. |
How about playing the 20-player Space Invaders on the world's largest screen?
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| The screen measures 53 m by 11 m. |
Take a look at two video clips of the gameplay. There's a boss at the last stage.
Behold, the giant tree of light!
The Umbrella Street looks more impressive during the day, methinks.
We were really lucky to be able to catch the last 'Water Magic Show' of the day at 9.30pm.
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| It's Japan's largest fountain light show with a total length of 85 m. |
Enjoy the two short videos of the show that I managed to record with my phone that had less than 10% power left.
We walked past the Flower Road area once again.
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| I was pretty exhausted, by my heart was full of happiness. |
Just like how one would end his trip in Amsterdam at its airport when leaving by air, our day ended at the gift shop named after the airport: Schiphol.
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| Some Huis Ten Bosch cookies for you perhaps? |
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| Hope to see you again someday, Churi-chan! |
I'd never forget that magical day. Anyway, let's hope that the pandemic will be over soon so that we can travel again. Take care and stay safe, everyone!
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