The rain pours down heavily as we walk down Scheveningen's boulevard, on our way to Strandpaviljoen Grand Plage, located right next to the Scheveningen Pier. Ah, the Scheveningen pier! Together with the Kurhaus, the first pier was part of the chic fin de siècle seaside resort that Scheveningen once was: a beautiful wooden construction on top of an iron installation. It burned down during the Second World War and in the early sixties, it was replaced by the modern eyesore that is still there today. No longer the place for the beau monde to lounge, the pier was now home to an amusement arcade and other cheap thrills. Still, the place did have a pleasant vibe, at leas as far as I can recall. I remember visiting the pier with my parents as a young child. There were little shops with the usual souvenirs and the most amazing shells I'd ever seen in my life. I always stood there, in front of the shop windows, wondering why I'd never found those kind of shells on the beach - as a naïve child, I figured that since they were sold on the Scheveningen pier, those exotic looking shells must have been gathered on the Scheveningen beach, but in retrospect, they must have come from more tropical waters.
I think, with the possibilities for people to go abroad becoming cheaper and more accessible, Scheveningen has lost the attraction it once had to many Dutch families. Why spend the weekend in the beachside part of The Hague, if you can go on a city trip to Istanbul or Marrakech? Why spend several weeks on a camping in the Scheveningen Dunes if you can spend the same weeks in Thailand? As Scheveningen lost its standing as a special holiday destination, the pier dwindled. Bad maintenance and visionless exploitation led to its rather sad demise and earlier this year, the pier was closed to the public, allegedly because it had become simply too dangerous to enter it. It is now waiting to be demolished, but as an illustration of how much everything has turned its back on the poor thing, people can't agree on who is responsible for doing so. Basically, the pier is still standing, because the municapality and its former owners can't agree on who should tear it down.
It's easy to guess where Grand Plage gets its name from: it looks basically like any 'grand café' in any random place in the Netherlands. Its furniture and decoration is mostly executed in red and the colour of wood, with fake antique tables, flower arrangements and small candles on the table. The music matches the interior: instrumental arrangements of classic pop songs and the occasional jazzy standard. Unsurprisingly, given the pouring rain and even the occasional thunder and lightning, we're the only guests. In fact, the manager and the waitress seem a bit surprised to see me enter the beach club.
Grand Plage does not have couches, which is too bad, as lying on a couch beside a nice fire would be the ideal way to pass this almost autumnal Monday morning. We squeeze ourselves behind a table - the tables are placed very close to each other here and listen to the dripping of rainwater in the buckets placed on the table, a sound that can be heard in almost every beach club on a rainy day.
The lack of fellow patrons and the fact that the music really isn't her taste, means that Rihanna Gaga has very little to do, but she doesn't really seem to mind. She babbles away - as she does most of the time, these days. Every once in a while, she forces me to stand up and take her hand, so that she can walk around the beach club. If she gets tired of that, she just crawls over the wooden floor. Her development is going very fast now. It was only a few days ago she managed to walk with either her mum or me holding only one of her hands, rather than both her hands, for the first time. Now, she can walk quite large distances like this, albeit still a bit shakily.
Most of this happened during our holiday in Ireland. It was really nice to spend more than two weeks almost 24 hours a day close to her. She's always been quite fond of cuddling, but as the holiday progressed, she became more and more affectionate towards us, often placing her head against ours, or drawing our hands to her own head so that we would caress her. She found most of the things she encountered in Ireland interesting: the people, the pubs, the different hotels, b&b's and guesthouses where she stayed - they were all full of exciting discoveries and explorations. She loved the live music in the pubs and the attention she got from locals and tourists. She hated, however, to sit in the car, which we did quite a lot during the holiday. She's simply not used to it, since we don't own a car. Anyway, she resents most situations where she is strapped to a seat - be it a high chair, a car seat or her stroller. Irish restaurants and pubs are very family friendly and often we would be offered a high chair the moment we entered, but she would only tolerate being strapped in one for a very limited amount of time. Another thing she didn't like so much about our holiday was spending so much time in nature. She's a real urban girl: the moment we arrived in Cork, she started to really enjoy being walked around in her stroller, but during our hikes through Ireland's beautiful national parks she would often have an expression of intense boredom on her face. Despite these minor details, the holiday was great.
Back to Grand Plage. I order the set breakfast, which consists of some ham, cheese, small packages of peanut butter and jam, some salad, a hard boiled egg and an assortiment of bread, and a cup of tea or coffee and orange juice. Compared to some of the lavish breakfasts I have enjoyed at the beach over the past few months, €12,50 seems a bit hefty for this, but it was a good breakfast nonetheless. I share bits of bread and parts of the salad with Rihanna Gaga, but she isn't very enthusiastic. Instead, she starts feeding me parts of the salad, another thing she's started doing recently. She really enjoys to reverse the roles - the baby feeding the parent, rather than vice versa - and she takes her task very seriously, frowning in concentration as she puts bits of tomato and alfalfa in my mouth.
Grand Plage remains quiet throughout our breakfast. Two women come in and wave back at Rihanna Gaga when she starts trying to get their attention, then both take out their mobile phones and start fiddling with it. In the kitchen, the waitress also gazes at her own mobile phone while Rihanna Gaga takes me for another walk around the beach club. The drops keep hitting the plastic buckets on the table and when we finally leave, the rain is still pouring down relentlessly on the empty shell of the Scheveningen Pier.
I think, with the possibilities for people to go abroad becoming cheaper and more accessible, Scheveningen has lost the attraction it once had to many Dutch families. Why spend the weekend in the beachside part of The Hague, if you can go on a city trip to Istanbul or Marrakech? Why spend several weeks on a camping in the Scheveningen Dunes if you can spend the same weeks in Thailand? As Scheveningen lost its standing as a special holiday destination, the pier dwindled. Bad maintenance and visionless exploitation led to its rather sad demise and earlier this year, the pier was closed to the public, allegedly because it had become simply too dangerous to enter it. It is now waiting to be demolished, but as an illustration of how much everything has turned its back on the poor thing, people can't agree on who is responsible for doing so. Basically, the pier is still standing, because the municapality and its former owners can't agree on who should tear it down.It's easy to guess where Grand Plage gets its name from: it looks basically like any 'grand café' in any random place in the Netherlands. Its furniture and decoration is mostly executed in red and the colour of wood, with fake antique tables, flower arrangements and small candles on the table. The music matches the interior: instrumental arrangements of classic pop songs and the occasional jazzy standard. Unsurprisingly, given the pouring rain and even the occasional thunder and lightning, we're the only guests. In fact, the manager and the waitress seem a bit surprised to see me enter the beach club.
Grand Plage does not have couches, which is too bad, as lying on a couch beside a nice fire would be the ideal way to pass this almost autumnal Monday morning. We squeeze ourselves behind a table - the tables are placed very close to each other here and listen to the dripping of rainwater in the buckets placed on the table, a sound that can be heard in almost every beach club on a rainy day.
The lack of fellow patrons and the fact that the music really isn't her taste, means that Rihanna Gaga has very little to do, but she doesn't really seem to mind. She babbles away - as she does most of the time, these days. Every once in a while, she forces me to stand up and take her hand, so that she can walk around the beach club. If she gets tired of that, she just crawls over the wooden floor. Her development is going very fast now. It was only a few days ago she managed to walk with either her mum or me holding only one of her hands, rather than both her hands, for the first time. Now, she can walk quite large distances like this, albeit still a bit shakily.
Most of this happened during our holiday in Ireland. It was really nice to spend more than two weeks almost 24 hours a day close to her. She's always been quite fond of cuddling, but as the holiday progressed, she became more and more affectionate towards us, often placing her head against ours, or drawing our hands to her own head so that we would caress her. She found most of the things she encountered in Ireland interesting: the people, the pubs, the different hotels, b&b's and guesthouses where she stayed - they were all full of exciting discoveries and explorations. She loved the live music in the pubs and the attention she got from locals and tourists. She hated, however, to sit in the car, which we did quite a lot during the holiday. She's simply not used to it, since we don't own a car. Anyway, she resents most situations where she is strapped to a seat - be it a high chair, a car seat or her stroller. Irish restaurants and pubs are very family friendly and often we would be offered a high chair the moment we entered, but she would only tolerate being strapped in one for a very limited amount of time. Another thing she didn't like so much about our holiday was spending so much time in nature. She's a real urban girl: the moment we arrived in Cork, she started to really enjoy being walked around in her stroller, but during our hikes through Ireland's beautiful national parks she would often have an expression of intense boredom on her face. Despite these minor details, the holiday was great.
Back to Grand Plage. I order the set breakfast, which consists of some ham, cheese, small packages of peanut butter and jam, some salad, a hard boiled egg and an assortiment of bread, and a cup of tea or coffee and orange juice. Compared to some of the lavish breakfasts I have enjoyed at the beach over the past few months, €12,50 seems a bit hefty for this, but it was a good breakfast nonetheless. I share bits of bread and parts of the salad with Rihanna Gaga, but she isn't very enthusiastic. Instead, she starts feeding me parts of the salad, another thing she's started doing recently. She really enjoys to reverse the roles - the baby feeding the parent, rather than vice versa - and she takes her task very seriously, frowning in concentration as she puts bits of tomato and alfalfa in my mouth.
Grand Plage remains quiet throughout our breakfast. Two women come in and wave back at Rihanna Gaga when she starts trying to get their attention, then both take out their mobile phones and start fiddling with it. In the kitchen, the waitress also gazes at her own mobile phone while Rihanna Gaga takes me for another walk around the beach club. The drops keep hitting the plastic buckets on the table and when we finally leave, the rain is still pouring down relentlessly on the empty shell of the Scheveningen Pier.
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