Zandvoort and beyond

We started nice and late to day and met a Gijs, a friend of Pieter's for coffee. The coffee shop was nothing special but the area of Amsterdam was just west of the downtown so it still had a lot of Amsterdam character (tall buildings) but none of the crowds.
Rachel Pieter and I then took a train first to Haarlem and then on to Zandvoort. Zandvoort is on the coast and is actually a huge beach resort town. I understand that real estate is worth a fortune there. The beach is all pristine sand and it stretches on as far as the eye can see in either direction. The weather today was just beautiful and I think that it is probably the nicest weather the Netherlands has seen this summer. It was totally packed with people despite it being Wednesday. And I mean lots of and lots of people. There were lawn chairs and wind shelters set up and they occured in waves of differenct colours as different companies sponsored different sections of the beach. So there would be a sea of pink (Ola ice cream) and then blue...and so on. People were just lying out and baking in the sun! There were resaurants and bars where you could get a snack and a few kid rides like the beach in Huntstanton in England only this was much, much more on a grand scale. We sat and read on the beach for a while and then sat and had a beer at one of the restaurants called No Name Bar (I'm not kidding).

We then walked to the edge of town and walked on these sand dunes for a while. The ground is sand and there is a fine layer of grass and shrub that grow. It is kind of rolling landscape and protected because it is fragile. That was very very relaxing. We saw some wild bulls and some birds of prey flying around. People of the town also have these little plots of land where they have a little shed and a garden because they don't have gardens in town. These little gardens are protected by barbed wire fences. Apparently this is very common in Holland!

We ate dinner at a place in town and I tried not to think about what 20 euros means :). We then took the train, then the metro and then the street car back into town. The train from Haarlem to Amsterdam was so packed with people that it felt like Toronto in rush hour! Apparently this is not the norm but one of the cars had a problem with it's wiring or something like that. Anyway, a very squished and hot fifteen minutes.