Tom's Travels: Day 40 - 46 Noordwijk

26 August - 1 September 2014

Day 40
Wrong station
I ended up at the wrong train station in Den Haag. I was at Den Haag HS but needed to be at Den Haag Centraal to catch my bus. Let's not ask why two major train stations were close enough to each other to walk between, but they were. It wasn't all bad though because there was a store in the HS station that sold this amazing dish.

Kebab in a tray. Fries, meat, cheese, salad and sauce.

This giant bike was at the HS station too.

Monster bike!

Once in Noordwijk, I got to go for a walk on the beach because I had the wrong spot marked on my map. I eventually found my way to the hostel, which wasn't on the beach front, and got checked in.

Day 41

Family dinner

The reason for being in Noordwijk is for a family wedding (tomorrow) and tonight there was a family dinner for pre-celebrations. I got to meet all the friends and family of the couple-to-be and there was some excellent food too. We had Thai food from my aunty, French champagne and there was a massive cheese board in the shape of France that was full of French cheese. I don't know the names of all the cheeses I tried but they all tasted amazing.

Day 42
The Wedding

The beautiful couple arrived in a cool looking Kombi

The celebrant did his thing

The celebrant did the informal part of the ceremony, where he spoke about the couple, in English and Dutch. Then he did the official ceremony in Dutch and French. It was the first time I've experienced a multi-language wedding and he did an amazing job at seamlessly swapping between all the languages.

The cake was cut

Photos were taken

I even got in on a photo

There was a beautiful sunset. I like all the trails from the planes in the clouds

The new wife performed a Spice Girls song to her husband, I didn't get pictures of this, and then...

The groom serenaded his new wife with a song

I had a really good time at the wedding. The food was lovely, we enjoyed some nice drinks, there was dancing and the weather was fairly kind to us. When it rained we went inside to eat and when it cleared up, we all went back outside to enjoy the day.

Day 43
Lazy day
Today I went back to the same beach club that the wedding was held at for a coffee with everyone from the wedding. Then in the evening, an Israeli that I met in the hostel and I went for a walk around the city, saw the beach and then had a drink at the hostel bar.

Day 44
Beach walk
Today was a super lazy day. The only blog-worthy thing I did was go for a walk on the beach. It's a nice beach, with sand and all, but it was super windy.

Panorama of the beach

There were a lot of kite surfers out because it seemed like perfect weather for them. There were also a lot of kites on the beach and I took this video of a group of people who were flying kites but were barely in control.

Day 45
Bike ride
I hired a bicycle today and rode from Noordwijk to Zandvoort. It was another windy day and it was a head wind on the way but it made for a lovely, relaxing ride back.

Proof I made it. The cool bike is in the background.

I saw this bad ass scooter on the way

I rode for about 30km and the Dutch bikes must work different muscles to the mountain bike I normally ride because my legs were feeling it after. The best thing about doing the ride was the entire thing was on dedicated bike paths. These paths weaved through forests and sand hills, so they were quite scenic and they were separate from the walking paths so you didn't have to avoid (many) pedestrians.