In her first solo overseas trip, the Duchess of Cambridge flew to Holland on a one day visit to The Hauge and Rotterdam. She had lunch with the King Willem-Alexander at the Villa Eikenhorst, a 1980s mansion where the monarch lives with Queen Maxima and their three daughters, six miles from The Hague.
Her visit was an attempt to use the Royal Family's soft power in a charm offensive to support the UK's efforts to help win trade deals with EU nations once Britain leaves the European Union.
Post lunch the Duchess visited the Mauritshuis museum in The Hague for the exhibition 'At Home in Holland: Vermeer and his Contemporaries from the British Royal Collection’. A Kensington Palace spokeswoman said: "The reason for the visit is that the Royal Collection loaned the works and, as a result, an invitation was extended to the Duchess, a former history of art student, to come over to the Mauritshuis. This is the centrepiece of the visit. Everything else has been organised around it."
At the Mauritshuis, Kate showed a keen interest in the gallery's most famous painting, Girl with a Pearl Earring by the 17th-century Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer. For the occasion, Kate wore pearl earrings borrowed from The Queen.
