A day in Zandvoort

This month, June has been such a terrible weather month. It is supposed to be summer now but it’s been raining non-stop for days and weeks already with low temperatures between 10C and 15C by day. It feels like we are stuck in a time warp, like we are still in spring or have fast forwarded to autumn.

At the beach we rented a pair of sunbeds and a wind cover. I am sure this book is great, a bestseller in the Netherlands but I could not finish it. I am not into tear-jerking, overly romantic and sentimental storylines, and that goes as well with music . I honestly thought I could read this to improve my Dutch (book was referred to by a friend) but helaas I am not motivated to read further. I will just stick to reading newspapers and business and travel magazines, in Dutch.

What I would like to share to you is a trip to Zandvoort aan Zee, one of the Netherland’s coastal villages in the North Holland province. We went there on a Monday last month, May. Mondays are always busy days, traffic on the highways, meetings at work, doing the necessary administrative stuff, etcetera but it was such a fine feeling, quite liberating in fact, to be at the beach instead. It kind of gives you that ‘I have finally retired’ or ‘I have won the lotto so I don’t bother with working’ feeling. Well, at least for a day.

The weather was not really that warm but it was warm enough to sit outside in a bikini and drink a glass of chilled rose.

Zandvoort also has a nice little centrum with amusing shops and appealing café terraces. All in all, it is an enjoyable little coastal town and we had a very relaxing Monday.

Not busy on a Monday here at the beach.

Zandvoort beach. There were quite a number of kitesurfers that day.

Nice little centrum of Zandvoort.

Did some people watching while sitting on a cafe terrace.

The Zandvoort aan zee train station is actually pretty. This train station was opened in 3 June 1881 and is connected to Amsterdam via Haarlem.

Residential part of Zandvoort aan Zee.