Fietstocht naar het strand (Bike trip to the beach)

The weather today was absolutely phenomenal: sunny, maybe even 80°F! Naturally, there was no better place to go than nearby Scheveningen Beach in The Hague, especially since today Schollenpop, a free pop music festival, was being held there. Apparently the entire population of the Netherlands had the same idea.

North Scheveningen from De Pier
I didn't really know where the music festival was and figured I would hear it when I arrived, but this was not so. (Hey, it's a big beach.) While looking for it, I was easily sidetracked into exploration. In the past, Laura and I have basically visited the central portion of the beach, but this time I ventured to the north side where everything starts getting glitzy. I walked, for instance, over the top of De Pier, an interesting pier/shopping mall/casino/bungee jumping structure. (Yes, that is a person dangling on the end of that bungee line in the picture at right.)

It naturally turned out that the music festival was on the complete opposite side of the beach from me, and in fact was not even accessible via the beach itself. In a country with tons of waterways, dikes, etc., this situation often happens: you're standing at point A and you can see point B - heck, you might even be able to talk to someone at point B - but you've got to ride a mile to get there. When I finally did arrive, there was decent music, abundant sunshine, and cheap beer. Life was good.

Schollenpop!
After tiring of the beach, I made my way back home (by bike) through The Hague, which is probably the least fun city to ride a bike through in all of the Netherlands because it is really spread-out and has lots of car traffic. This results in bicycles, like cars, having to stop at lights every ten seconds. Luckily, the Hague is a particularly cultured city that features some kind of sculpture or memorial at roughly those same intervals. On the Lange Voorhout (a famous street in town), for instance, I saw some cool sculptures by Mexican artist Javier Marín.


It was a nice day in the sunshine. When I got home, I thought I'd end it by picking out a nice dinner at the grocery store. I settled on what I thought from the picture on the package to be a ready-made shrimp stir fry. Unfortunately, when I got it home, I discovered I had bought 400g (that's 0.8 lbs!) of frozen crawfish. Lessons learned:

1. This (bad karma) is what I get for not putting more effort into learning Dutch
2. Rivierkreeftjes is Dutch for crawfish.
3. Don't ever eat 0.8 lbs of crawfish in one sitting again.

To the North Sea or Bust!

And bust we almost did.

Armed with bikes, the camera, a blanket, and a Fiets map that proudly proclaims "Miles of bike paths with easy to follow signs," we headed off to the North Sea. Anticipating a short seven mile ride, we hoped to stop off at the Gemeentemuseum in The Hague and be on the beach by lunch time. Somewhere along the way we missed the sign for Route 44 - most likely because a group of rowdy teenagers spray painted over it and any other surface nearby.

Unfortunately, by the time we realized the lack of signage, we were happily biking through Leidshendam and a few miles north of The Hague. Turn around. Pedal. Pedal. Pedal.

Rijswijk? What? Isn't that city south of the Hague? Turn around. Pedal. Pedal. Pedal.

Ahhh! Those buildings with the colorful local nicknames...Finally The Hague!

After a trip through the Gemeentemuseum - which was quick mostly due to the fact that our stomachs were eating themselves by around 2pm - we continued on to Scheveningen. The name "Scheveningen" was used as a password by the Dutch resistance during WWII because even though the Germans could learn Dutch, their native accents prevented them from correctly pronouncing the name of this seaside town. (We just called it "the beach town".)


We quickly dropped the bikes off and headed to a seaside cafe to enjoy lunch and a beer. The cafes were full of groups playing board games, couples lunching, and old people laying out. I think we saw more people in their swimsuits in the cafes than on the beach.

After lunch, we laid out our blanket on the beach and relaxed while watching kite flyers, surfers, and little kids playing in the surf. Since the water is in the 60s year around, we skipped a dip in the ocean.

In a hurry to get back to Delft for the tragic Clemson game, we followed road signs back and were making great time. Until a sign directed us to go left directly into a building.

What???

Our 14 mile ride that somehow ballooned to 28 miles.