Buena Vista Beach Club

It's raining terribly when we descend the slope leading to a lower part of the boulevard and park our bicycles. Billie Stormzy remains stoic, seemingly undisturbed by the heavy rainfall. Rihanna Gaga (his big sister who is joining us today) and me, however, are in a hurry to get inside. We lock our bikes and run to Buena Vista Beach Club, where a fireplace is burning invitingly.

Unfortunately, the waitress tells me the kitchen isn't open yet. I'm slightly annoyed - I checked their website before we left and saw that they opened ar 9:00; it said nothing about the kitchen opening later than that. However, I suppress my annoyance and order a cup of tea. Rihanna Gaga takes a water, as usual. The waitress tells us that we must wait about half an hour for the kitchen to be ready - it's 9:30 right now.

Billie Stormzy is delighted. The beach club is large and there is nobody yet, so lots of space and places to crawl around. There's an inner part, the beach club proper, and covered terraces around that. With no real division between the parts, he can crawl along the outer galeries in a circle around where his sister and I decided to sit down. She and I take turns in making sure he doesn't get into trouble - because getting into trouble is turning out to be one of his specialist skills these days. Always wanting to do more than what he is actually able to, with a penchant to climb stuff, he is unaware of the danger he is regularly saved from. Indeed he will often react rather angrily when you try to pull him away from things he could fall from, cut himself on, bump into or burn himself at. 

Despite us being here so early, Billie Stormzy woke up late today - well, late for him: 7:30. Recently, my partner bought a little book with a method for getting babies to sleep on their own. It was quite necessary. Billie Stormzy was not an incredibly difficult sleeper, and definitely not compared to some of the terrible stories you hear about babies keeping their parents up at night. He would fall asleep quite easily, but only on our lap, and would then wake up halfway through the night, after which we would normally take him into bed and he would fall asleep quite quickly again. Because he was outgrowing his cod a few months ago, he'd now sleep in his own room which meant that one of us would sleep on a matrass in that room with him for  part of the night. And since a few weeks he became more difficult, waking up by the smallest of sounds; which was a bit troublesome, given that his room is next to the kitchen and we also have a seven year old girl in the house. And although I'd get him to sleep quite easily, he started to refuse to go to sleep on his mother's watch. 

The method explained in the book did its work within days, giving it the feel of something like a miracle method. Billie Stormzy is now as good a sleeper as his sister was when she was a baby, and you can basically put him to bed without trouble, after which he sleeps through the night nine out of ten of the times.  It's all about establishing a routine and keeping to it - something we did quite intuitively with his sister, but failed to do with him. So, hurrah for Billie Stormzy, the book and us!

The waitress comes by with a form that I need to fill in - the usual: name and phone number, so that they can track me in case of a corona outbrake in this restaurant. I also have to tick a box declaring that I was asked "the questions regarding Covid-19 symptoms". Which I wasn't. But I tick the box anyway and order the set breakfast for myself, and a pancake for Rihanna Gaga. 

After playing for a while with her baby brother, she tells me she has to go to the toilet. I tell her she can go and ask the waitress where it is, and to her dismay it turns out the toilet is outside. We try the door to the terrace and it seems locked, so she goes through the front door. The rain, which had stopped for a while, is pouring down again. I watch her go and think to myself that with the palm trees on Buena Vista Beach Club's terrace being swayed by a strong wind, it looks very much like a tropical storm from behind the windows. As if we're not in Scheveningen, but somewhere close to the equator. My poor daughter is running around with little jumps, her hands in front of her chest, like a little nervous rabbit. She can't find the toilet and comes back again. 

Again we ask the waitress where the toilet is, and it turns out the door to the terraces can be opened afgter all - it's just a bit difficult to do so. The waitress points in the direction and again Rihanna Gaga tries to find her way in the heavy rainfall, but walks right past a sliding door that is the entrance to the toilet. So, with Billie Stormzy on my arm, I dash after her and open the door for her. She returns relieved - and dripping wet. 

Like its neighbour, EscuBelle, Buena Vista Beach Club looks very much like an old school beach club: a wooden structure with a tilted roof, surrounded by terraces. The wood is painted black outside. Inside, it's mostly lacquered wood, both for the walls and for the tables, with black chairs around them. Dimmed lightning gives the place a cozy feel, and it certainly isn't a state of the art designer look that Buena Vista Beach Club is going for. The disco lights on the ceiling make clear that this is also a place to party in the evening. 

Breakfast is brought: brown bread (called farmer's bread on the menu), a croissant, ham, cheese, scrambled eggs, jam, butter, a small bowl with yoghurt, cereal and fresh fruit, and a chocolate roll. The bread is a bit more special than at other places and the chocolate roll is a nice touch; other than that, this is a solid breakfast that doesn't really stand out, but certainly also doesn't disappoint. Rihanna Gaga, meanwhile, is delighted: the pancake she is served is not a bunch of small American pancakes dripping with syrup, as at other places we've been to recently. Instead, it's a large Dutch pancake that comes with powdered sugar or syrup. After finishing it, she walks around the table to steal my croissant and chocolate roll, but I manage to keep half of it myself. Billie Stormzy, too, is happy as I share bits of the breakfast with him. He loves the scrambled eggs, enjoys a piece of bread, but is especially keen on the yoghurt. 

One of the reasons we went to the beach today is that it is the last day of the summer holiday for Rihanna Gaga. Tomorrow she has to go back to school, so it is nice to have one last day of holiday with the sun, sea and sand - spoiled, admittedly, by the rain, but that is not going to stop us! Nor is it going to stop a large group of German men that arrives around the time that our breakfast is finished. Almost all of them are wearing black t-shirts, making the one with a burgundy red t-shirt and the other with a dark green t-shirt look positively garish. As I pay and get ready to leave, I see that they've all ordered a large beer and are now sipping it and chatting. At that moment, my partner arrives and Billie Stormzy greets her enthusiastically, all smiles and flapping arms and legs. We decide to sit down and have a coffee before leaving, but move to the covered terrace where we can lounge on a couch. 

Also on Breakfast at the Beach: Jump back in time to when Rihanna Gaga and I visited this place in 2014