A Day at the Beach in Holland, Part 1

Last week I wrote about the great sleepover my daughter threw before her and one of her friends decided to take a surf lesson.

Well, today I am going to tell you about our experience with the beach that is closest to us...it will come in three parts throughout the week though because it is just too picture heavy to put in one post....

I will start with our first trip. Our first trip was taken the weekend of July 4th. We were feeling a bit homesick because 1) we still didn't have a permanent place to live and 2) this was the first time we wouldn't get to see fireworks and be near to celebrate our home country's Independence Day. But, thankful for tourism there were lots of people headed to the beach this day and many were donning US Flag shirts and speaking plenty of English!

 One of the things I noticed when we got to the beach area was things were really set up differently here! I knew a bit from following Angie over at Reasons to Dress she did a post on how Italians do the beach, but I wasn't sure it would be the same here. It seems very similar to one of the posts she wrote.

There are all these little beach clubs and you can rent the chairs and wind shelters from them. I have yet to do this as we are more the lay in the sand kind of people, plus I hear they are kind of expensive during the season. But, amazing because at your disposal are all kinds of things from chairs to wind shelters, food, drinks, and sports equipment!

These sweet food trucks roll up and down the beach stopping every so often and will stay for a while and they actually grill up fresh food! Pretty awesome!

I must admit I am in love with the beach club idea. Of all the beaches I have gone to in North America nothing has ever been offered like this! Some places came close when we lived in Santa Monica, but nothing this elaborate.

After we enjoyed the sun, (we tried the water but it is even colder than the Pacific), we decided we needed to try some good food.

We headed up to the closest beach club, Mango's. This place was fantastic! Service was terrible but that is par for the course here in Netherlands so far...the atmosphere is fun and relaxing and the food is good!

Fresh Mojito! YUM!

We split some appetizers we got nachos and satay.

We decided to head home when the sky started to look like this...a bit frightening, eh? Luckily the train pulled up and we were able to jump on and take these silly selfies:

We were feeling particularly silly and could not stop laughing. That's why the bottom left picture we look a bit odd because that was our "we are going to get serious and take a nice picture now" face.

We had a truly fantastic time and really enjoyed beaching it here! Have you ever seen a beach like this? Where?

Stay tuned for Part 2 on Thursday!