Rihanna Gaga is sleeping soundly when I wake her up. It's already a
quarter to ten and we have full day ahead of us. Today, we'll travel to
Zwolle, where Rihanna Gaga will spend two days with her grandparents -
my girlfriend's parents. But first, we're having our last breakfast at
the beach.
That's right. Although most beach clubs are open for another three weeks, we're finishing our Monday mornings project today, because next Friday we're flying to Tunesia. I have decided to end our summer in style: we're having a champagne breakfast at Oceans beach house.
Oceans is a very classy looking beach club. Its design is executed in dark brown, green and black and looks fancy. Its menu is more exclusive than that of most beach clubs, which isn't surprising, since it belongs to the same owner as a chic restaurant behind the Scheveningen Kurhaus.
Unfortunately,
the restaurant isn't open when we arrive at 10:40. This is
disappointing, as I checked last week with them to make sure they would
be open. They ensured me they would be, but well... they're not,
apparently. The cook is there alone and he apologises, telling me that
the waiter won't arrive until 11.
That's another 20 minutes. I consider going to one of the other beach clubs that are open right now - we passed several of them on our way to Oceans - but I want to stick to the original plan: champagne breakfast it has to be, so I decide to have a walk and return in 20 minutes.
We walk to the sea and Rihanna Gaga turns very cheerful close to the waves. She walks around on the sand, enjoying herself hugely, laughing and shouting loudly. She falls a few times and I wipe the sand off her hands. Apparently, she finds this funny. She keeps putting her hands on the sand and then shows them to me, demanding that I wipe them again. And again. And again. And again. And...
In fact, wiping has had her interest for a while now. Whenever she sits down on the couch, a chair or bed, she wants me to wipe dust - either existing or non-existing - from her feet and legs, laughing when I proceed to do so. Exactly what is so funny about this isn't clear to me, but she apparently really likes to be clean about things. She also wipes her own mouth after dinner, and will use the same napkin to then wipe the table. Although, it must be said, she mostly just goes through the motions, not really cleaning anything.
When we return to Oceans, the waiter still hasn't turned up and the cook decides to take matters into his own hands: today, he'll be the waiter as well. I order the champagne breakfast. He tells me it won't include the mini hamburgers announced on the menu, but he'll replace it by sweet buns. I'm not sure if I find this replacement suitable, but I decide to not make his life any harder than it already is.
He turns off the music in the kitchen - some loud EDM coming from a small transistor radio - and turns on the music in the beach club: smooth jazz. In fact, this jazz is so smooth, it cannot be grasped, but slides through your ears like dry sand through your fingers. At the end of our breakfast, I find myself wondering if there were actual songs, or if it was just one long piece that repeated the same series of riffs over and over again. I'm sure Rihanna Gaga would have preferred the EDM over this and she completely ignores the music throughout her stay.
Even considering it includes a glass of decent Moët & Chandon - not the best, though - the breakfast is overpriced at 19,75, especially without the mini hamburgers. There's some average smoked salmon, good bread and a croissant, some cheese and ham and a boiled egg. Ah yes, and those sweet buns.
When I look outside, I see they're breaking up Zanzibar, where we had breakfast last week. Interestingly enough, the waitress there told me they made a point out of serving their entire menu up to the last day and being fully operational even outside the season. I can see why this is important. During the season, you know as a beach club that there will be enough guests. It's outside the season, when the customers are mostly locals, that you build a relationship with possible regulars. Either you're open and you serve what you promise, keeping to the opening times announced on your website and menu, or you're not - and thus Zanzibar apparently prefers to break up, rather than to be sort of open-ish until the final date the beach clubs are allowed to stay on the beach.
Rihanna Gaga is not having her best day today. Periods of cheerfulness are followed by sudden sulking or behaviour that is so wild she ends up hurting herself - and then crying. She is, however, also very affectionate. These days, she enjoys sitting on my lap or sitting beside me much more than a while back, even relaxing sometimes instead of always running around or acting crazy.
In fact, even though today at Oceans is not the special champagne breakfast I'd planned, it is a nice end to this season of breakfasts at the beach. I will always remember this second summer with my daughter as a golden summer and the Monday morning breakfast was definitely part of that. We had a lot of fun: it was nice to have this project of beach club sampling, it gave us something to do together, something we both enjoyed. And looking back to that very first breakfast in April, I realise the enormous changes since then. I started these breakfasts with a baby at my table. Now I'm sharing my breakfast with a little girl. A little girl who walks and sometimes even runs, who's saying her first words (unfortunatly, it wasn't daddy - nor mummy; it was the name of our cat). Who has a great sense of humor, is almost always cheerful and happy, who is, actually, great company when you visit a beach club and has excellent taste in music. And who I love so much, I sometimes think my heart will burst.
Rihanna Gaga is particularly interested in the sweet buns, but since they're filled with all kinds of sugary stuff, she's not really allowed to eat them. She happily accepts the smoked salmon instead (not very healthy either because of the salt, but okay), of which she eats quite a quantity. She also gets hold of part of the boiled egg and eats half of it, spreading the other half over the couch. She greatly enjoys drinking the orange juice, but knocks over the glass - first time this happens during one of our breakfasts, which is, if you think about it, pretty amazing. Yes, she's being difficult - like little girls can be difficult.
My girlfriend has been gone since Friday and being home alone with my daughter has given me a taste of what it's like to be a single parent - and I have a huge respect for all those single mums and single dads who live like this all the time. The responsibility, having to care all the time, non stop - it is quite tiring, really. It's not the first time I do this - in February, I took care of her for two weeks while my girlfriend was away and then I even visited family in Sweden for a week with her. It was even more stressful the first time, but still: it is quite stressful now as well. And this time, she's not going to daycare anymore, so I really am caring for her continuously. However, it's also really nice to spend so much time with her - to be so close to here all the time. And she's mostly been as sweet as possible.
I pay for the breakfast and I leave a tip - not for the club, but for the cook doubling as waiter who improvised pretty well. Just then, my girlfriend calls me. She's found an appartment in Tunisia where we'll live for the next few months. It's in Sidi Bou Said, very close to the sea. I wonder if there's beach clubs there.
That's right. Although most beach clubs are open for another three weeks, we're finishing our Monday mornings project today, because next Friday we're flying to Tunesia. I have decided to end our summer in style: we're having a champagne breakfast at Oceans beach house.
Oceans is a very classy looking beach club. Its design is executed in dark brown, green and black and looks fancy. Its menu is more exclusive than that of most beach clubs, which isn't surprising, since it belongs to the same owner as a chic restaurant behind the Scheveningen Kurhaus.
Unfortunately,
the restaurant isn't open when we arrive at 10:40. This is
disappointing, as I checked last week with them to make sure they would
be open. They ensured me they would be, but well... they're not,
apparently. The cook is there alone and he apologises, telling me that
the waiter won't arrive until 11.That's another 20 minutes. I consider going to one of the other beach clubs that are open right now - we passed several of them on our way to Oceans - but I want to stick to the original plan: champagne breakfast it has to be, so I decide to have a walk and return in 20 minutes.
We walk to the sea and Rihanna Gaga turns very cheerful close to the waves. She walks around on the sand, enjoying herself hugely, laughing and shouting loudly. She falls a few times and I wipe the sand off her hands. Apparently, she finds this funny. She keeps putting her hands on the sand and then shows them to me, demanding that I wipe them again. And again. And again. And again. And...
In fact, wiping has had her interest for a while now. Whenever she sits down on the couch, a chair or bed, she wants me to wipe dust - either existing or non-existing - from her feet and legs, laughing when I proceed to do so. Exactly what is so funny about this isn't clear to me, but she apparently really likes to be clean about things. She also wipes her own mouth after dinner, and will use the same napkin to then wipe the table. Although, it must be said, she mostly just goes through the motions, not really cleaning anything.
When we return to Oceans, the waiter still hasn't turned up and the cook decides to take matters into his own hands: today, he'll be the waiter as well. I order the champagne breakfast. He tells me it won't include the mini hamburgers announced on the menu, but he'll replace it by sweet buns. I'm not sure if I find this replacement suitable, but I decide to not make his life any harder than it already is.
He turns off the music in the kitchen - some loud EDM coming from a small transistor radio - and turns on the music in the beach club: smooth jazz. In fact, this jazz is so smooth, it cannot be grasped, but slides through your ears like dry sand through your fingers. At the end of our breakfast, I find myself wondering if there were actual songs, or if it was just one long piece that repeated the same series of riffs over and over again. I'm sure Rihanna Gaga would have preferred the EDM over this and she completely ignores the music throughout her stay.
Even considering it includes a glass of decent Moët & Chandon - not the best, though - the breakfast is overpriced at 19,75, especially without the mini hamburgers. There's some average smoked salmon, good bread and a croissant, some cheese and ham and a boiled egg. Ah yes, and those sweet buns.
When I look outside, I see they're breaking up Zanzibar, where we had breakfast last week. Interestingly enough, the waitress there told me they made a point out of serving their entire menu up to the last day and being fully operational even outside the season. I can see why this is important. During the season, you know as a beach club that there will be enough guests. It's outside the season, when the customers are mostly locals, that you build a relationship with possible regulars. Either you're open and you serve what you promise, keeping to the opening times announced on your website and menu, or you're not - and thus Zanzibar apparently prefers to break up, rather than to be sort of open-ish until the final date the beach clubs are allowed to stay on the beach.
Rihanna Gaga is not having her best day today. Periods of cheerfulness are followed by sudden sulking or behaviour that is so wild she ends up hurting herself - and then crying. She is, however, also very affectionate. These days, she enjoys sitting on my lap or sitting beside me much more than a while back, even relaxing sometimes instead of always running around or acting crazy.
In fact, even though today at Oceans is not the special champagne breakfast I'd planned, it is a nice end to this season of breakfasts at the beach. I will always remember this second summer with my daughter as a golden summer and the Monday morning breakfast was definitely part of that. We had a lot of fun: it was nice to have this project of beach club sampling, it gave us something to do together, something we both enjoyed. And looking back to that very first breakfast in April, I realise the enormous changes since then. I started these breakfasts with a baby at my table. Now I'm sharing my breakfast with a little girl. A little girl who walks and sometimes even runs, who's saying her first words (unfortunatly, it wasn't daddy - nor mummy; it was the name of our cat). Who has a great sense of humor, is almost always cheerful and happy, who is, actually, great company when you visit a beach club and has excellent taste in music. And who I love so much, I sometimes think my heart will burst.
Rihanna Gaga is particularly interested in the sweet buns, but since they're filled with all kinds of sugary stuff, she's not really allowed to eat them. She happily accepts the smoked salmon instead (not very healthy either because of the salt, but okay), of which she eats quite a quantity. She also gets hold of part of the boiled egg and eats half of it, spreading the other half over the couch. She greatly enjoys drinking the orange juice, but knocks over the glass - first time this happens during one of our breakfasts, which is, if you think about it, pretty amazing. Yes, she's being difficult - like little girls can be difficult.
My girlfriend has been gone since Friday and being home alone with my daughter has given me a taste of what it's like to be a single parent - and I have a huge respect for all those single mums and single dads who live like this all the time. The responsibility, having to care all the time, non stop - it is quite tiring, really. It's not the first time I do this - in February, I took care of her for two weeks while my girlfriend was away and then I even visited family in Sweden for a week with her. It was even more stressful the first time, but still: it is quite stressful now as well. And this time, she's not going to daycare anymore, so I really am caring for her continuously. However, it's also really nice to spend so much time with her - to be so close to here all the time. And she's mostly been as sweet as possible.
I pay for the breakfast and I leave a tip - not for the club, but for the cook doubling as waiter who improvised pretty well. Just then, my girlfriend calls me. She's found an appartment in Tunisia where we'll live for the next few months. It's in Sidi Bou Said, very close to the sea. I wonder if there's beach clubs there.
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