Beachclub Zeezicht

Zeezicht offers a bit of a surprise. Located next to the Pier, in the middle of the boulevard, it doesn't really have to try very hard to attract customers. From the outside, there isn't really anything to distinguish it from any other beach club. And yet, when you enter it, it has a very distinct feel to it: it's wooden walls, large chesterfields around fire places, bookshelves (even if they don't try to hide the fact that they're fake) wallpapers with prints of logs, deer skulls on the wall and homely lampshades give it the air of a hunting cabin. Somewhat contrasting with this, slightly spooky minimal house is blasting from the speakerboxes.

It's raining outside and it's already getting dark. The atmosphere is decidedly autumnal when we make our way to Zeezicht, cycling along the Scheveninge Boulevard. We're not coming from far: we've spent a large part of the afternoon at Beachclub Sol, where we went together with a girl from Rihanna Gaga's class at school and her mother. We met them at the music class that Rihanna Gaga follows at our local YMCA, a class she's been to a lot with my girlfriend, but this was my first time. Appararently it's a very fun affair, with two affable men who play guitar and sing funny songs about cookies and pizzas with the children, but today it was a bit chaotic with a group of boys who were more interesting in shouting 'weener!' than really participating in the dancing and music-making. The whole thing was rather exhausting, especially because I was already tired because I had quite a troublesome day at my job yesterday (a few weeks ago a colleague flipped and started shouting at me and behaving in a rather threatening way and yesterday we were supposed to talk things over with my manager, but this turned into a session where both my aggressive colleague and my boss were encouraging me to look at my own part in all of this, leaving me feeling decidedly cornered).

So it was nice to unwind a bit after all of that. At Sol, like at Zeezicht the fires were on and Rihanna Gaga got on really well with the other girl, so they were mostly playing together. This meant that I could chat with her mum, with whom I shared an interest in heritage mediation (and trust me, people with an interest in heritage mediation do not come in dozens). Rihanna Gaga can be a bit demanding at times - she rarely plays by herself, but prefers to play with us, so that when I'm at home with her I spend hours playing with her dolls or being involved in roleplaying - and my girlfriend is away for two days, so this was actually rather nice.

Anyway, now we're at Zeezicht, I order my third mint tea of the day, Rihanna Gaga has a chocolate milk and we ponder the menu. We decide to have fish steaks (salmon and codfish) and French fries and order this with the waitress, who is cheerful and friendly in a down-to-earth way. All in all, there's just a very good vibe here. While we wait for our dinners, Rihanna Gaga and I discuss the events of the day. She's very positive about everything: even though she rarely left my lap during the music lesson, she enjoyed it very much, she loved playing with the girl from her school (with the fact that this girl is a year older than she is as an added bonus) and she thought it was very nice that she could sleep in bed with me last night (something she is always allowed to do when one of us is away). And I agree - that was very nice. She woke up, as she often does, at half past six, and then the rule is we only get up at seven, but this meant - as it often does - that she asked almost every five or ten minutes whether it was already seven yet. However, she then cuddled close to me when we were ready to get up and then we both fell asleep again until half past eight. It was lovely, because we rarely sleep this close together anymore, something we did quite often when she was still a baby - and even as recent as a little over a year ago, she would still almost always fall asleep in my arms in the evenings.

The food is good. It's a bit expensive for what it offers - the steak dish basically amounts to a simple pasta frutti di mare with a salmon and a codfish steak on top of it - but it's tasty enough and considering the location, one can fully understand that this costs €20,-. The French fries are salty - very salty. A bit too salty to Rihanna Gaga's taste, who gulps down half of my mint tea after eating the French fries. She also enjoys the codfish - more than salmon, which is usually her favourite fish - and agrees to eating some broccoli and zucchini before starting with the French fries, which are too hot anyway when the food arrives.

In between eating and after she's finished what she wants to eat tonight, she runs around a bit, dancing enthusiastically to the minimal house that is still playing. It's already late. I want to pick up some things from the supermarket and then we need to go home because Rihanna Gaga's bedtime is approaching fast. Rihanna Gaga has decided I am a monster and she throws my scarf around me to capture me and now I have to come with her. That's fine, I tell her, as long as you take me to the waitress so that I can pay our bill. While I'm doing so, she's running around and then trips over her scarf and starts to cry - more because she's embarassed, than because it hurts. The friendly waitress tries to comfort her with a cookie, but this only adds to the shame and she almost doesn't take the cookie, but then her taste for cookies trumps her sense of embarassment. We quickly put on our coats and then we're off.