the continuing saga of nature boy.

Yesterday I accidentally walked from Zandvoort to Bloemendaal and back, and it was great. My plan was just to hang out at Zandvoort for the day, but I started walking north along this very handy brick oceanway that leads up the coast (note the two blue Google push pins on the coast, the southernmost one is Zandfoort).














Here's the brick oceanway, this is me looking back south towards Zandvoort. At a certain point the oceanway splits into two lanes, one for bikes, one for pedestrians, and you can just go and go and go.

















Dotting the trail up the seaside are little fish trailers, selling all kinds of fried and non-fried oceanic bounty. I stopped at a Kroon Vis cart, they've been selling fish in Zandvoort for 30 years. Here's a stolen photo of a Kroon cart on a snowy beach in 1982:

















Ha ha, good clean fun, a fish truck in the snow. So anyway, I myself was looking to try some more fried surimi, and in this endeavor I succeeded mightily:

















Can't say that it was as hot or as fresh as the last time I had it, but still quite tasty in a "dream food" kind of way...like you're eating in a dream, and the food you're eating is somehow familiar but not quite right....but luckily there's a dipping sauce.

So you walk for a while, chomping on fried imitation dream crab, and just below you on the sand you're constantly passing these beach clubs. Viewed from the back they look like training camps for dangerous fundamentalist surfers or supermodels:

















And there's one every couple of minutes, so you're constantly tempted to get off of your healthy walking mission and descend into the the sun-baked, coconut-scented, and otherwise welcoming dens of iniquity below.

Nah, they're mostly pretty wholesome places, at least on a Tuesday afternoon. This is where my will finally broke, Club Nautique (where the food coming out of the kitchen looked pretty good), and I took this picture because this couple capped off their romantic beachside meal by proceeding to each whip out a novel and start reading.














So, I was about halfway to Bloemendaal at this point, which I didn't actually know, I was just walking, and I saw this inviting scene on the inland side of the road:

















This is a nature preserve for cranes. I poked around a little bit over there, and then trudged on northward. I eventually reached my sort-of destination, which I didn't even know for sure was going to be there: Woodstock 69.

It's yet another beach club, but they've had a reputation for being very laid-back and hippie-ish, and for asking interesting chefs to devise the menu every summer. The vibe was mellow indeed, and the music was a surprise (an entire J.J. Cale concert) and surprisingly enjoyable. I could've stayed all afternoon.

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Speaking of Nature Boys, here's another one.

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