It's the second day of pentacoast, it's tropically hot and it's approaching eleven once we make it to the beach. The combination of these facts ensures that it is positively crowded by the time we arrive at Scheveningen's northern beach this week. There's an enormous traffic jam on the road to the parking spaces and at the beach there's hundreds of people. It's a far cry from the quietness of the last two weeks.
We sit down in front of Beachclub Culpepper. Like many beach clubs around here, Culpepper is arranged in such a way that the beach club itself lies at the top of a slope, with several plateaus spread out in front of it. This makes for excellent people watching spots. Rihanna Gaga hugely enjoys this arrangement, pointing and shouting at children passing by and waving randomly at strangers. To increase the sense of a lazy summer morning, the people at the beach club have decided to play Manu Chao, but Rihanna Gaga does not really seem to care for this kind of music, despite its reggae flavours.
It takes a while before we can attract the attention of the waitress, but we have hidden ourselves a bit in a corner so that is understandable. There is no set breakfast, so I order a ciabatta with smoked salmon and cream cheese (€6,50) and a cappucino. The ciabatta arrives almost immediately, but the cappucino lags behind. While waiting for my coffee, I feed Rihanna Gaga her fruit, which she insists on eating while standing against the side of the couch we're sitting on with her back to me - which makes spoon-feeding her not very easy. She's in her usual good mood, moving around as much as the couch allows and later on, on the floor. She's fascinated by two women who sit on the plateau in front of us and insists on joining their conversation despite the fact she can't talk yet. The women don't seem to mind, so I let her, while I eat my ciabatta which is definitely not overpriced (considering the beach clubs location, €6,50 can actually be considered cheap) but also nothing special. Culpepper is maybe more of a restaurant than a lunch room. Its dinners are actually quite good and it prides itself on the fact that it's the only place on the beach where you can eat pizzas from a stone oven.
"Is it a boy or a girl," one of the women asks and adds: "because I thought it's a boy, but then I saw the hairclip". It's a girl, I tell her and she apologises. I have no idea why - is it insulting to confuse the gender of a baby? A baby can't be insulted, so that means mistaking the gender of a child supposedly offends the parent - which in fact it doesn't at all, not me at least. And I can understand where the 'mistake' comes from. Rihanna Gaga is wearing a white and blue onesie and blue, as everyone knows, is for boys. However, blue also goes very well with Rihanna Gaga's bright blue eyes and baby clothes for girls are often so frilly and sweet that it's nauseating, so there's a rule I don't always stick to. It is a rather strict rule, however. When we brought blue clothes with us to the hospital right after Rihanna Gaga was born, the nurses asked whether we knew it was going to be a girl. We did, but we just liked the blue sweater better.
It's not breakfast for two today. My girlfriend joins us after a while. While she is also eating a salmon ciabatta, I order a fresh mint tea, of which I spoonfeed a bit to Rihanna Gaga before drinking it.
She still loves this kind of tea and it's a good way to get her to drink some extra, which is important with the oppressive heat. After a while she gets bored and starts to scream, so I pick her up, put her on my shoulders and walk to the sea with her. This is the first time this year we take her to the sea. Last year, when she was still very young, she was always quite interested in the waves, but now she's a bit reluctant. She pushes herself closer to me as I hold her and walk into the water. When I lower her to let her feet touch the waves, she starts crying. Because I think it is unacceptable that a girl who lives in Scheveningen is afraid of the sea, I sit down on the beach just on the edge of where the water reaches and put her in front of me. At this safe distance, she is fine and reaches out to collect shells. However, when the water comes too close, she wants to sit on my lap and even from there, she startles back every time the water approaches us or touches her feet. Slowly she gets used to the waves and the water, however, and when I walk back with her on my shoulders, she is shouting proudly, as if she's just conquered the entire sea. This I've seen her do more often: whenever she's done something she found scary at first, she will act very proudly afterwards.
We rest a little bit in front of Culpepper, before I go inside to pay. Culpepper has a very no frills decoration, with mainly wooden furniture and a few decorative touches such as lanterns and mosaics here and there.. Its colours are wood, black, white and red. It has become increasingly cloudy: within the hour or so we spend here, the sky has gone from bright blue to grey and I don't want to get caught in the thunderstorm that's been forecasted for later today. As we walk back, there's still endless streams of people arriving, filling up the boulevard and beaches.
We sit down in front of Beachclub Culpepper. Like many beach clubs around here, Culpepper is arranged in such a way that the beach club itself lies at the top of a slope, with several plateaus spread out in front of it. This makes for excellent people watching spots. Rihanna Gaga hugely enjoys this arrangement, pointing and shouting at children passing by and waving randomly at strangers. To increase the sense of a lazy summer morning, the people at the beach club have decided to play Manu Chao, but Rihanna Gaga does not really seem to care for this kind of music, despite its reggae flavours.
It takes a while before we can attract the attention of the waitress, but we have hidden ourselves a bit in a corner so that is understandable. There is no set breakfast, so I order a ciabatta with smoked salmon and cream cheese (€6,50) and a cappucino. The ciabatta arrives almost immediately, but the cappucino lags behind. While waiting for my coffee, I feed Rihanna Gaga her fruit, which she insists on eating while standing against the side of the couch we're sitting on with her back to me - which makes spoon-feeding her not very easy. She's in her usual good mood, moving around as much as the couch allows and later on, on the floor. She's fascinated by two women who sit on the plateau in front of us and insists on joining their conversation despite the fact she can't talk yet. The women don't seem to mind, so I let her, while I eat my ciabatta which is definitely not overpriced (considering the beach clubs location, €6,50 can actually be considered cheap) but also nothing special. Culpepper is maybe more of a restaurant than a lunch room. Its dinners are actually quite good and it prides itself on the fact that it's the only place on the beach where you can eat pizzas from a stone oven.
"Is it a boy or a girl," one of the women asks and adds: "because I thought it's a boy, but then I saw the hairclip". It's a girl, I tell her and she apologises. I have no idea why - is it insulting to confuse the gender of a baby? A baby can't be insulted, so that means mistaking the gender of a child supposedly offends the parent - which in fact it doesn't at all, not me at least. And I can understand where the 'mistake' comes from. Rihanna Gaga is wearing a white and blue onesie and blue, as everyone knows, is for boys. However, blue also goes very well with Rihanna Gaga's bright blue eyes and baby clothes for girls are often so frilly and sweet that it's nauseating, so there's a rule I don't always stick to. It is a rather strict rule, however. When we brought blue clothes with us to the hospital right after Rihanna Gaga was born, the nurses asked whether we knew it was going to be a girl. We did, but we just liked the blue sweater better.It's not breakfast for two today. My girlfriend joins us after a while. While she is also eating a salmon ciabatta, I order a fresh mint tea, of which I spoonfeed a bit to Rihanna Gaga before drinking it.
She still loves this kind of tea and it's a good way to get her to drink some extra, which is important with the oppressive heat. After a while she gets bored and starts to scream, so I pick her up, put her on my shoulders and walk to the sea with her. This is the first time this year we take her to the sea. Last year, when she was still very young, she was always quite interested in the waves, but now she's a bit reluctant. She pushes herself closer to me as I hold her and walk into the water. When I lower her to let her feet touch the waves, she starts crying. Because I think it is unacceptable that a girl who lives in Scheveningen is afraid of the sea, I sit down on the beach just on the edge of where the water reaches and put her in front of me. At this safe distance, she is fine and reaches out to collect shells. However, when the water comes too close, she wants to sit on my lap and even from there, she startles back every time the water approaches us or touches her feet. Slowly she gets used to the waves and the water, however, and when I walk back with her on my shoulders, she is shouting proudly, as if she's just conquered the entire sea. This I've seen her do more often: whenever she's done something she found scary at first, she will act very proudly afterwards.
We rest a little bit in front of Culpepper, before I go inside to pay. Culpepper has a very no frills decoration, with mainly wooden furniture and a few decorative touches such as lanterns and mosaics here and there.. Its colours are wood, black, white and red. It has become increasingly cloudy: within the hour or so we spend here, the sky has gone from bright blue to grey and I don't want to get caught in the thunderstorm that's been forecasted for later today. As we walk back, there's still endless streams of people arriving, filling up the boulevard and beaches.
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