Habana Beach

For the first time since we began frequenting beach clubs again, we visit one with a Buddha. Two years ago, there seemed to be Buddhas everywhere, but so far, there were none in the beach clubs that we visited this year. At Habana Beach, however, there is a large head of Buddha on the terrace. What Buddha and Havana have in common is anyone's gues, but Habana Beach seems rather unconcerned about living up to its name: I could not discover anything particularly Cuban about its decoration or menu. It is, however, very nicely decorated. Wooden colours everywhere and a large part of the beach club, centred around a fireplace, is created to resemble a living room, with paintings on the wall, wallpaper with a wild flower pattern and couches. I wasn't too crazy about the stools with coverings made out of jeans, but at least that is an original touch you wouldn't find in any other beach club. The music is middle of the road hits, both contemporary and classic: Bruno Mars's brilliant Grenade was playing when we arrived and after that, nothing particularly noteworthy happened music-wise.

Habana Beach is actually not in Scheveningen. After surveying the number of beach clubs we haven't visited so far, I realised we might actually run out of places to visit before the end of summer. So I decided to include beach clubs at Kijkduin, another seafront area of The Hague that comes across as a sort of perpetual holiday resort. Whenever I visit Kijkduin, I always feel that living here must be pretty much like being trapped in what somebody in the nineteen fifties thought was 'having a great time' (it was actually built in the nineteen sixties and seventies, but I'm pretty sure it was conceived a bit earlier). Although I must admit, one could be trapped in worse conceptions. It's about 25 minutes cycling through the dunes, the same beautiful stretch of nature that we cycled through two weeks ago on our way to Strandpaviljoen Zuid.

It's surprisingly busy, considering that it's eleven o'clock on a grey Monday morning. But there are a lot of Germans and Belgians (where the first of May is a holiday, so that means they have a long weekend and apparently quite a few of them chose to spend it at the North Sea). When we enter Habana, the waitress tells us that if we walk a bit further, it'll be warmer. That sounds good, as it is still an unusually chilly spring. Rihanna Gaga insists that we sit in the corner, where we have a 270 degree view of the beach, dunes and sea.

We order the set breakfast which consists of slices of bread, a croissant, assorted cheese and roastbeef, a small bowl of exotic fruit, a fried egg, sprinkles and jam. That means it is a leaner version of the set breakfasts offered in many beach clubs, but Habana has chosen quality over quantity: it all tastes quite good and for instance the cheese is certainly a notch above what is usually served at beach clubs. At €7,50 it is certainly a good deal. Alongside the breakfast, I take a ginger-lemon tea and Rihanna Gaga has her usual apple juice. Service is swift and good. The waitress brings two plates together with the breakfast so that we can share and checks regularly if there is anything we want. When she notices that Rihanna Gaga is wearing a Pipi Longstockin dress (which my girlfriend bought for her at Göteborg airport last month), she asks whether Rihanna Gaga feels like that charactwer. She does sometimes, I answer, and certainly when she's fighting dragons and witches!

Everytime Rihanna Gaga sees a bird - which are either seagulls or crows here at Kijkduin - she shouts: "A witch! Go away, you naughty rogue!" I have no idea where she got the idea from that birds are witches, but together with imaginary dragons and non-existant cockroaches (I don't think she actually knows what cockroaches are), they feature constantly in her fantasy world. She can spend quite a while on our balcony or during walks through nature fighting these creatues: dragons are slayed with swords, witches with magic sticks and cockroaches with hoses (all of them represented by sticks that she picks up by the dozens to take home). During the free market for King's Day, last Thursday, we bought a small dragon puppet for her with which she is very happy and that made me remember that I had two dragon dolls in the attic (well, not really dragons, they are actually dolls of Pain and Panic from Disney's 1997 Hercules movie which I bought on New Year's Eve 1998 in Stockholm). So yesterday I promised I'd get them from the attic for here and the first thing she asked this morning was: "Are you still going to get those dragon dolls from the attic?" Now, we're playing together with those dolls in between eating our breakfast. We share the croissant and egg and she has some pieces of bread with sprinkles. I eat the rest and then order a latte macchiato while Rihanna Gaga plays on the terrace, where she dances with the green dragon doll.

I propose that we leave. Today, we're going to one of The Hague's main attractions: miniature city Madurodam. Although Rihanna Gaga is very much looking forward to that, it still takes about 45 minutes before we've really left after I've paid and we've gone outside. First, she wants to play in the small playground next to the beach club and then she needs to build a sand castle!