Last Wednesday was a day of all-things-Dutch. Again, no kayaking. But there is kayaking on the horizon, so stay tuned!
8am arrival in Den Hague, the next big city north of Delft and the official seat of government in the Netherlands (but not the capitol - that's Amsterdam). I obtained my official residence and work permit documents before we commenced the day's fun. We hopped on bus #24 towards Kijkduin (which literally means "Look Dune") - a small coastal town which seemed to be driven primarily by beach tourism. We hid in a postcard shop from a brief rain shower, during which Bridget purchased a variety of slightly inappropriate postcards: friends of Bridget: watch out.
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| Downtown Den Hague |
We then began walking along the beach boardwalk toward the Zandmotor (known in English as the Sand Engine), an incredibly wide beach that protrudes from the adjacent shorelines. This was constructed in 2011 by placing a massive amount of sand along this 2 km stretch of coast. While beaches are often "nourished" by placing sand to widen the beach, this is unsual in the shear volume of sand that was placed. The beach erodes over time as breaking waves push sand downstream, widening beaches further down the coast. The idea was to place a lot of sand instantaneously and infrequently rather than more typical annual/frequent beach nourishment schemes, which have pretty big impacts on the dune, beach, and subtidal ecosystems. The Dutch believe this is better for the ecology and environmental impacts, and it's a pretty creative idea. You also don't have to manually place sand on all the beaches downstream since the sand eroded from this extra-wide beach will keep those wider. Since this is really the first of it's kind, there are extensive monitoring programs in place, with wave buoys, camera systems, and survey crews. I almost accepted a PhD position to study the waves and rip currents around this nourishment a couple years ago, so I was excited to visit it soon after arriving!
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| Map of our 5 mile walk around the Zandmotor. You can see how much wider the beach is at this location. There are two lagoon-ish ponded areas in the back of the dune, which apparently serve some function to protect groundwater quality, which isn't entirely clear to me... |
The entire beach was strewn with small shells. I'm not sure whether these came with the sand that was placed on the beach (most likely?) or whether they were deposited there later on.
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| There were researchers out this morning measuring something in the surf zone. |
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| The Argusmast. This tower holds multiple cameras, which are used for monitoring waves, shoreline erosion, number of beach visitors, and even for predicting where rip currents might occur, to keep swimmers safe. |
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| Side view of the sand engine |
When we returned to Den Hague, we tried out the local fare: raw herring fillet on white roll, smothered in onions. Never has anything smelled so fishy. Can't really endorse this one with much enthusiasm, though we did finish the entire sandwich.
Fast forward, and we're back in Delft for the evening. We've seen advertisements all around the city for $15 Girl with the Pearl Earring portraits (the painting by Vermeer, who lived in Delft). Bridget, Elizabeth, and I decided that we could do this ourselves, so with the help of some white wine, we managed to pull together this portrait in ~15 minutes. Thanks to Elizabeth for setting the black background *sheet*, Bridget for being an excellent photographer who held the camera still between excessive giggling, and both of you for getting that ridiculous head wrap to stay on my head :)
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