Quiet and mostly indoor day as the wind was ferocious... With intermittent rain. And that's just fine by us.
Every second day in Noordwijk and the surrounding area seems to have nice weather and every other second day has rainy and/or windy weather. Hence, as yesterday was beautiful and pleasant, today was less so.
What else to do on a rainy Dutch morning than to go slow and take your time. European daylight saving time also concluded over night so all clocks moved back 1 hour so we all received an "extra" hour.
We realized that not everybody may know where we are in the Netherlands, so here is a map. The blue dot is where we are in Noordwijk and you can see Amsterdam top right, Utrecht to the right, Rotterdam at the bottom and Leiden, were we went yesterday, to the southeast.
The Hague (Den Haag), the capital of the Netherlands, is so small that it did not even feature on the map at this resolution, but it is located down the coast from Noordwijk, just south of Scheveningen. The Hague is another day trip away for later.
We did, however, Skype with Hans' son Jeremy, who reported all good in Manly, NSW, Australia. The bushfires around Sydney are still lingering, but it is not as bad as it was earlier according to the young man.
Some time after 11am, Hans decided to venture out just to get some air. The rain had stopped, but the wind had picked up instead. Really picked up.
This being a Sunday, Hoofdstraat was very empty just before midday and almost every single shop was closed. One direction...
... And the other. On other days, Hoofdstraat has been full of shoppers, pedestrians and cyclists.
Hans continued his stroll towards the beach and as he got closer and closer, the wind picked up even more. Hold on to your hat and to your lapdog...
No, it was not very pleasant down by the water. The wind whipped up the sand which found its way into the eyes, ears, even nose. Hans turned around here, but as you can see there were some brave souls at the water's edge. If you live in this kind of coastal environment, you probably get used to strong winds very quickly.
Hans wandered a bit further to the south and saw these presumably bath huts. No, Hans couldn't see any living soul here either, or were they closed because of the Sunday. Who knows?
Regarding Sundays, Vomar, our next door supermarket, opens 12pm on Sunday so it is not closed all day Sunday. A little later Di ventured there to do some grocery shopping for fresh bread and dinners this week.
A lazy afternoon indoors followed as being outside any further today was not that attractive.
Later in the afternoon, we did brave the elements and went our for a stroll. Not as windy as earlier in the day, but still pretty full on, see the flags above...and Di's hair.
The two mermaids... Again...
A food truck with a difference... Note the imaginative artwork on the side of the truck.
We knew, of course, that Abel Tasman was Dutch, but it was still nice to see an "Australian" connection in Noordwijk.
Well, we didn't wander for too long as the clouds increasingly got darker and a few drops of rain appeared (or was it sea water lifted up by the strong wind...?). Anyway, here is Di opening up our front door.
More chilling as there seemed to be limited choice outside this windy and soon rainy Sunday and that was perfectly fine by us. Afternoon tea was some of Di's homemade apple crumble with ingredients bought earlier.
Then more lazing. It was that kind of day.
We then had wurst, kartoffeln und grunkohl for dinner (very German) washed down by some local Dutch brews. We tried out some local radio stations for accompanying music and got "lucky" with some yodeling before the music selection got dull. So we settled for a Mexican radio station instead. Lots of fun.
Di watched a little bit of TV (the movie The Mask) as Hans blogged, then some more reading.
All good and good night.
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