Right next to Hartbeach is the only real beach club that is open year rond, the Waterreus (the two other places to eat and drink on the beach that don't close during the winter months, Hartbeach and Aloha, are surf schools and shops doubling as beach clubs). It's a 15 minutes walk, me on foot and Rihanna Gaga on her kick scooter. As we walk through Scheveningen's main schopping street, the Keizerstraat, Rihanna Gaga points out the different colours and tells me whose favourite colours they are. Red is grandma's favourite colour, blue her grandddad's, green is her own favourite colour, and mama's. "Now I'll look for purple," se says, generously, reminding me that purple is my favourite colour. I'm quite impressed that she remembers all of this, often from just hearing people tell her their favourite colours once.
We arrive at Waterreus at 9:15, 15 minutes after it officially opens. The waitress seems somewhat surprised to see me and the table at which we sit down still has what looks like crumbs from yesterday's dinner on them - I spot rice grains and traces of sauce. The waitress wipes some of it away with her hand and I ask her if we can eat something. She nods and looks at me, waiting for my order. Since she's apparently not going to bring the menu and I remember they have a deluxe breakfast from checking out their website, I tell her we'd like to have the €15 deluxe breakfast. Alongside the breakfast, I order a latte macchiato and Rihanna Gaga has a apple juice.
Rihanna Gaga is very mellow today. While I read, she is content to just lie next to me on the couch that we are sitting at, her head on my shoulder, looking at the empty beach club. Waterreus is quite posh, but not too. It's decorated entirely in maritime colours - white, beige and blue - with nice little corners with fireplaces, couches and comfortable chairs. She asks whether she's been her and I tell her she hasn't. Because we really have never been to the Waterreus before. She doesn't agree. "I think I've been her, when I was a little baby," she tells me. I tell her she hasn't, but she refuses to accept this: "I'm sure I've been her," she stubbornly maintains. I can see why she'd think so: Waterreus very much looks like any other of the posher beach clubs.
Our drinks are brought quite quickly, but the breakfast takes time. After half an hour, the waitress brings plates and little packages of sprinkles and jam, telling us the breakfast is taking awhile because they need to fire the oven. It takes another half an hour before the the actual breakfast finally arrives. In the meantime, Rihanna Gaga has gotten impatient and to keep her content I open some of the cartons with sprinkles, so that she can nibble on those. She soon forgets that she's waiting for breakfast, however. We've brought her toy stroller, with which she walks around the restaurant, playing mama with a small doll. The stroller has a bit of a history. She got it when, at a large supermarket in Tunisia, she suddenly started to ask for a toy stroller. We didn't know how she got the idea in her head, although later we figured out it must have been from one of her favourite books, about a little girl who repairs her own toy stroller. When she just had the stroller, she always wanted to take it to daycare. Often, she'd actually walk all the way from daycare to our house with her stroller, turning a 25 minute walk into something closer to an hour. The stroller is a sturdy little thing, because it survived so many walks over the rough Tunisian urban terrain.
At times, Rihanna Gaga quickly returns to where I sit. For one reason or the other, she is slightly scared of a man who is cleaning the restaurant, especially when he turns on his vacuum cleaner. The man is very friendly, so I wonder why she reacts like this. I suppose it is because there just aren't any men in her life apart from me. At the daycare, there's only women, she has more interaction with grandmothers than grandfathers and although I have many brothers, the one other adult she knows best outside of us and her grandparents is my girlfriend's sister. I've noticed she doesn't really warm easily to other men in general and given the small amount of men she actually knows, I can't blame her.
Because Rihanna Gaga is so mellow and I am enjoying the pleasant atmosphere, with lounge music playing quietly in the background and the beach and the sea outside the large windows, I decide to not be annoyed by the long wait. But I do feel - as with Simonis, last week - that as a restaurant you should either make it clear that the menu is not served until a specific time, or just don't open before you can actually serve. Especially because I specifically asked whether we could eat something, I think an hour is really too long to have to wait for a breakfast that includes nothing that takes an incredible effort to prepare. There's two little breadrolls, smoked salmon, assorted meat products, cheese and some salad. The only things that I can imagine would need some preparation are the croissant (assuming they finish the croissant in the oven), two slices of toasted bread (assuming, again, they toasted them in the oven rather than in a toaster), and bacon and eggs (which I suppose are made in a frying pan). So why did it take an hour? Was the cook not there, yet? Did they have to buy some of the ingredients? The food tastes good enough - nothing special and not very fresh.
Like last week, Rihanna Gaga loves the salmon, devouring large pieces of it, alongside some egg, cheese, chicken and bread with sprinkles and jam. I eat the rest. After that, I have another tea while Rihanna Gaga decides to walk around for a bit again. She really wants me to follow her, but I prefer to sit and read a bit more. This frustrates her: she wants to play with a little girl who's arrived with her mother and grandmother, but she's hesitant to approach her. When she does manage to get into contact with the girl, the girl wants to play with her stroller, which isn't to Rihanna Gaga's liking, so the mother picks up the girl and Rihanna Gaga is on her own again. I realise it's time to go and I ask her what she'd like to do next. Her face lightens up: "I want to play on the beach and go to the sea!" she says. Well, that's an easy request. And off we go.
We arrive at Waterreus at 9:15, 15 minutes after it officially opens. The waitress seems somewhat surprised to see me and the table at which we sit down still has what looks like crumbs from yesterday's dinner on them - I spot rice grains and traces of sauce. The waitress wipes some of it away with her hand and I ask her if we can eat something. She nods and looks at me, waiting for my order. Since she's apparently not going to bring the menu and I remember they have a deluxe breakfast from checking out their website, I tell her we'd like to have the €15 deluxe breakfast. Alongside the breakfast, I order a latte macchiato and Rihanna Gaga has a apple juice.
Rihanna Gaga is very mellow today. While I read, she is content to just lie next to me on the couch that we are sitting at, her head on my shoulder, looking at the empty beach club. Waterreus is quite posh, but not too. It's decorated entirely in maritime colours - white, beige and blue - with nice little corners with fireplaces, couches and comfortable chairs. She asks whether she's been her and I tell her she hasn't. Because we really have never been to the Waterreus before. She doesn't agree. "I think I've been her, when I was a little baby," she tells me. I tell her she hasn't, but she refuses to accept this: "I'm sure I've been her," she stubbornly maintains. I can see why she'd think so: Waterreus very much looks like any other of the posher beach clubs.
Our drinks are brought quite quickly, but the breakfast takes time. After half an hour, the waitress brings plates and little packages of sprinkles and jam, telling us the breakfast is taking awhile because they need to fire the oven. It takes another half an hour before the the actual breakfast finally arrives. In the meantime, Rihanna Gaga has gotten impatient and to keep her content I open some of the cartons with sprinkles, so that she can nibble on those. She soon forgets that she's waiting for breakfast, however. We've brought her toy stroller, with which she walks around the restaurant, playing mama with a small doll. The stroller has a bit of a history. She got it when, at a large supermarket in Tunisia, she suddenly started to ask for a toy stroller. We didn't know how she got the idea in her head, although later we figured out it must have been from one of her favourite books, about a little girl who repairs her own toy stroller. When she just had the stroller, she always wanted to take it to daycare. Often, she'd actually walk all the way from daycare to our house with her stroller, turning a 25 minute walk into something closer to an hour. The stroller is a sturdy little thing, because it survived so many walks over the rough Tunisian urban terrain.
At times, Rihanna Gaga quickly returns to where I sit. For one reason or the other, she is slightly scared of a man who is cleaning the restaurant, especially when he turns on his vacuum cleaner. The man is very friendly, so I wonder why she reacts like this. I suppose it is because there just aren't any men in her life apart from me. At the daycare, there's only women, she has more interaction with grandmothers than grandfathers and although I have many brothers, the one other adult she knows best outside of us and her grandparents is my girlfriend's sister. I've noticed she doesn't really warm easily to other men in general and given the small amount of men she actually knows, I can't blame her.
Because Rihanna Gaga is so mellow and I am enjoying the pleasant atmosphere, with lounge music playing quietly in the background and the beach and the sea outside the large windows, I decide to not be annoyed by the long wait. But I do feel - as with Simonis, last week - that as a restaurant you should either make it clear that the menu is not served until a specific time, or just don't open before you can actually serve. Especially because I specifically asked whether we could eat something, I think an hour is really too long to have to wait for a breakfast that includes nothing that takes an incredible effort to prepare. There's two little breadrolls, smoked salmon, assorted meat products, cheese and some salad. The only things that I can imagine would need some preparation are the croissant (assuming they finish the croissant in the oven), two slices of toasted bread (assuming, again, they toasted them in the oven rather than in a toaster), and bacon and eggs (which I suppose are made in a frying pan). So why did it take an hour? Was the cook not there, yet? Did they have to buy some of the ingredients? The food tastes good enough - nothing special and not very fresh.
Like last week, Rihanna Gaga loves the salmon, devouring large pieces of it, alongside some egg, cheese, chicken and bread with sprinkles and jam. I eat the rest. After that, I have another tea while Rihanna Gaga decides to walk around for a bit again. She really wants me to follow her, but I prefer to sit and read a bit more. This frustrates her: she wants to play with a little girl who's arrived with her mother and grandmother, but she's hesitant to approach her. When she does manage to get into contact with the girl, the girl wants to play with her stroller, which isn't to Rihanna Gaga's liking, so the mother picks up the girl and Rihanna Gaga is on her own again. I realise it's time to go and I ask her what she'd like to do next. Her face lightens up: "I want to play on the beach and go to the sea!" she says. Well, that's an easy request. And off we go.
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