The Beach is this way

April 22, 2014

I have been a little behind on keeping up with my writing. Every night we all sit up late and visit and everyone tells stories about when they were young and all the crazy antics they were into and reminiscing about the last time each of them were in Holland. It has been great fun and super interesting; Ben loves hearing the stories and I’m loving getting to know everyone better. However it gives me little to no time to keep my blog up-to-date. So I’m trying to sneak it in before we head out on our adventures in the morning. It’s hard to concentrate though because Peggy and Joan are all excited and fired up for the day, but they have gone over to the other cabin so hopefully I can get this done.

Tuesday was our day for visiting The Hague. We left the cabins at 10am and it took us an hour to get into the city. We had put our destination as the house where Opa Van Exel had his shoe store (they also lived above the store). 

Again we took a bunch of pictures in front of the house and everyone driving by probably thought we were crazy. Then we just followed Oma and let her show us around the area; she showed us where she went to school, where she had her first job, and the doctor’s office where she gave birth to her first child, Elly. She told us that while she was there she was so homesick while she was there, and then she laughed because her parents’ house was literally one block up and around the corner.

We walked down to a shopping area and poked through a few shops. We ended up spending quite a bit of time at a candy store. I cannot believe how much candy all the “adults” have been eating on this trip; they constantly have a piece of candy in their mouths, and it’s all some variation on black licorice (of course). 

Oh yes, they are very generous and always want to share (and I always try their weird candy because I’ll try anything, this folly lead me to having damp candy disintegrating in my pocket the previous day when we got caught in the rain), but Jonathan, Jessica and Ryan are not having any of it, no matter how much they are persuaded. I told Oma that her kids were running wild and ruining their appetites, she said something to the effect of “they’ve always been like that”.

So with pockets bursting with candy we continued on our walk and headed to the beach. We walked to the docks and Oma led us to a restaurant that she had been to in the past and we had an awesome fish and chips lunch. The plates of food were so huge we only got one plate for every two people and it was more than enough.

The morning had started out pretty grey and it didn’t look like it was going to clear up (in fact it was trying to rain), but by the time we came out of the restaurant it was clear and sunny and beautiful. So we continued to the beach and enjoyed a lovely stroll down the boardwalk all the way to the pier. Apparently about a year ago the pier was purchased by some guy who ended up going bankrupt, so the pier was closed and falling into disrepair. Peggy said she could remember walking to the beach from her grandparents’ house and going to the pier.

Along the pier we came across this section with a bunch of big and little statues; on our way back we stopped there for a rest and enjoyed some ice cream. 

On our way back to the car we stopped at the Jumbo grocery store to pick up supplies. Ryan wanted to make us a stirfry for dinner (which proved difficult as none of the frying pans were very big), and of course we needed more vla (a creamy pudding that Peggy has been eating every day before and after every meal). Going grocery shopping with 10 people is a bad idea, it’s just chaos. I opted to wander on my own and just let everyone else figure out what we needed for food for the next few days. 

Too many people with too many opinions = nothing gets done in a timely manner. By the time we left the grocery store we had enough food so that everyone had a bag or a box to carry back to the car. Once we got back to the cabins we enjoyed another evening of food, wine and storytelling.