Boulevard Scheveningen

Yesterday Rene and I took the bus from outside the rented apartment towards the beach at Scheveningen.  It is a challenging word to pronounce, and during WW2 if a civilian was thought to be a German soldier passing themselves off as Dutch, the Resistance would ask them to say something like (in Dutch) 'the ships arrived in Scheveningen harbour', and if they failed first time they'd be shot.  There's a serious amount of phlegm in that phrase :)

We had tea at the beautiful kurhaus, an elegant hotel from the 1880's, then meandered along the esplanade as far as we could avoiding the multi million euro extension and creation of a dyke running one kilometre along the shore.  You can detour onto the beach, quite some way out to sea, around the backside of the beach works.  They are working on the beach during winter and the esplanade during summer.  Now two years on, there is just over one year's work left to complete it.

Sadly it was also announced yesterday at the information booth on the beach that the Spanish architect of the project, Manuel de Sola-Morales, had died at his home in Barcelona.  I read this today for myself; Rene heard the news in Dutch and didn't think it worthy of mentioning to me in English - I have to live with this 'filter' of knowledge and it can be a teeny bit frustrating at times because I would have thought it to be a monumentally massive bit of information - yet not mentioned at all.

Anyway, the project continues and will be a favourite walking area of ours in the future, plus there will be great seafood restaurants and outlets  everywhere, and of course (how could I forget) pavilions set up along the beaches from March until September with food, drinks and general revelry right on our doorstep (OK, maybe 15 minutes walk away).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92Ur2RXb1r8&feature=player_embedded

The beach has been extended 70m farther into the sea and you can appreciate the finished product better in this video:

http://youtu.be/ZSIKlkJQqws