Nothing accumulated, however, for a number of minutes the flakes were thick and furious.
After breakfast, we walked to the local synagogue. It is quite a structure: Synagoge Jacob Obrechtplein and the congregation is sweet, but tiny... Ashkenazi "Black Hat" Orthodox. A young fellow befriended me and explained that many (about half) the congregation was likely away in Austria... skiing. The size and grandeur of the building suggests that the area was filled with a very comfortable community of Jews in the late 1920s. It was built in an Art Deco style with many mosaics, wood carving, stained glass windows and stenciled paint. Franklin (our B&B host) had mentioned that, indeed there were many Jews there then, and when comfortable German Jews started emigrating many of them arrive to the neighborhood, only to be evacuated a few years later during the Sho'a.
After services we walked along the canals.
I've often been intrigued by how it is that The Hague is the location of the international courts. I don't know the answer, but the city itself is lovely and lively.
For some reason I haven't figured out, we could not program the GPS to lead us to Spinoza's house. Eventually I gave up and had it lead us to a tourist information center. It turns out the closest available was one at the Central Station. Nobody there knew where 72-74 Paviljoensgract was. I asked a cabby who was able to give me pretty good walking directions, but... without a map, which we did not have, we wouldn't get there. I asked the young woman at the desk in the hotel next door who was very helpful. As we walked, we experienced another storm of flurries.
We were about a hundred yards from Spinoza's house (I couldn't find the street signs) when I asked a young policeman (enforcing parking violations) where the street was. He paused a moment, and sent me down a street a block away (but the wrong street).
So, there he was,in the middle of the street, just as I'd seen him in other photographs, sitting in the middle of the street, thinking and writing.
Debbie knocked on the door to see if he was home (I didn't know he drove a Volvo).
Our pilgrimage complete we headed back at a quick clip to get to the van before the young policeman cited us for having run out the meter (at only 1.90 Euro for an hour!) and set off for our evening's destination: Renesse.
We're beginning to learn how to live in the Van.
Current milage: 166484 KM (=103,448.36 miles).