2 Juli - Beached

We slept in a little bit this morning, happy not to be rushed to get down to the classes. After getting ready and putting our luggage in the luggage room downstairs, we got on our way to the beach. There is a cute little pancake place on the way to the tram station, so we stopped for more pancakes. Still not as good as the Pancake Bakery, but good.

One of the students at the Masters class that was from Amsterdam suggested we go to Zandvoort Beach because it was most easily accessible. She was right. We took the tram to Centraal Station and hopped the metro to Zandvoort aan Zee. The train was jammed with people that mostly looked like they were going to the beach as well. Skylar found a spot on the stairs to sit and I was pushed up against the door. It was about a 20 minute ride and once we got through the crowd, just a 10 minute walk to the beach.

It was like a parking lot of people. There were these plastic things with beach chairs in front of them that you parked at. We found an empty one near the front and laid out our stuff. Many of the women were topless, which Skylar remarked as being strange, but I told him not to worry and that it was quite normal here. It was so nice to just lay in the sun and relax. The water was cold, but not too bad. Skylar kept running in and out of the water and playing in the sand. It's been a couple years since we'd gone to the beach. The waves were pretty low and we were able to go way out and still touch the ground.

We went to this cute little Italian place for some pizza for lunch and then went back to the waves. We stayed a while longer until we were pretty exhausted and it started getting a little chilly. The train was just as packed on the way home, but we were able to find seats. 

Back at the Hostel, we checked into our room and settled in for bed since we had to leave pretty early in the morning to catch the train back home.