Monday, August 2, 2010

De Haan - the best decision of our trip


O-M-G! The best decision we made on our trip was to make this little day trip detour to De Haan, Belgium. It was a quaint little coastal town that was obviously a place for families during the summer holiday. When we arrived in town it became pretty obvious that there were a lot of families and we may have a difficult time finding a place to sleep. We did a modified Chinese firedrill - Tine would stop at the light, the rest of us would jump out and start asking at hotels. You see...we thought we were being smart about starting at the edge of town furthest from the ocean. Uh...no...we should have started at the beach. That's where we found two rooms 25 yards from the beach and breakfast included for $40 a person. DEAL!

We walked the beach Wednesday night to see the tide way out. You can see from the photo below how far out the water was.
It was a little cloudy also but that didn't stop us from hanging at the beach and taking a midmorning snooze. Kristi went for a run and the rest of us snuggled in the lounge chairs.
By noon the sky was clearing and it was warming up. We soaked up the sun and watched the families enjoy the beach.

This was the best thing to watch. The children would make things to 'sell' - this family had tissue paper flowers for instance. Other children would 'buy' them using scoops of shells that they carried around in buckets. It was a fun concept and even more fun to watch the kids barter over their goods!
Yup...Tine and I got in the water which was really cold until you got about waste deep and then it was much warmer. We stayed for quite awhile...until my swimsuit top broke! No worries....fixed with a bobbypin.

This dad was a total hoot! His daughters had made a hole in the sand and waited for the tide to come in and sink them. They wore these pirate hats and played for hours.
This was another awesome thing at the beach. A Beach Library. All you had to do was leave your name and you could check out a book to read at the beach. They had tubs and tubs of children's books and lot of different languages.
This is how we all felt after our day at the De Haan beach. We were so relaxed and ready for the last leg of our journey to Netherlands.
I knew immediately that we had entered the Netherlands when we spotted this van...no idea what it says but the people inside matched the painting :).
It was also interesting that the people of the Netherlands speak English and Dutch. Tine told us that there are few films, music etc that are translated to Dutch because it isn't spoken very many places. Therefore, the people have to learn English to be able to see and listen to these things. Most of the signs we saw were a mix of English and Dutch. One word Dutch, one word English. It made us anxious to begin our day in Amsterdam!

3 comments:

  1. Love the architecture in the first picture and does your sister know you posted a picture of her sleeping?!?! :) Janell

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  2. Just caught up with all your trip posts. Wow, what an uber fabulous trip! Great pics! Looking forward to to seeing your finds from the flea markets!

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