resting at our castle, aren't you jealous

We pounce on dinner as though we haven't eaten for days. It is DELICIOUS: steamed brocolli with molasses sauce, green salad, rice, potato soup that may or may not be made with a meat base but I didn't ask and they didn't tell, spinach potato cheese casserole, pineapple yogurt with whip cream. Also there is a deer's head on the wall of the dining room. Obviously.

Seriously, this castle hostel is the best idea ever. All I want to do is sit and think about how I'm sleeping in a castle tonight. But instead, we go to the beach.

I know! The Netherlands has a beach?!!? Duh, it's totally on the north west coast of Europe. From our castle, we walk through a patch of woods and then over some grass-covered sand dunes and then *poof* there is the ocean! It's the North Sea, so a part of me thinks that it doesn't really count. I have to constantly remind myself that the North Sea is actually CONNECTED TO THE ATLANTIC and is therefor not a lake but SALTY WATER WITH WAVES.

It is very cloudy and totally the opposite of Santa Monica. We are two of five people out as far as I can tell. The beach is empty of trash and towels and umbrellas and sunbathers -- just sand and surf. It is, of course, overcast and a mite drizzly. Round wooden logs stick up out of the ground in sets of two lines. These are old pier pilings, and they have started to get green with moss. It is very windy, and after each wave pulls back into the ocean its foam is left behind on the sand, which is then blown away, so that the ground is filled with flying specks of white foam. Where the waves don't reach, dry sand hurls past so fast it stings my legs.

After the beach, I read Elle and Elle Decor in Dutch on the couch in the castle lounge. A little girl sitting opposite me asks her father if that is my bed. I guess the Dutch don't lie down barefoot on their furniture. I take a hot HOT shower with a push-button faucet and our castel roommate goes into the forest to look for bats. Obviously.