Happy Kingsday! Time for another post about the Netherlands! When you think of Amsterdam, you don’t immediately think of beach, but there is there is an official Amsterdam beach! I must admit that I, along with most of the other Dutch people, think it a ridiculous habit to put ‘Amsterdam’ before anything that’s vaguely in the area. But it’s good for the tourists.

Amsterdam Beach, better known as Zandvoort-aan-Zee, or just Zandvoort, is a city on the westcoast of the Netherlands, some 30 kilometers from Amsterdam. It will take you about 40 minutes to reach by car, half an hour by public transport and and hour and 45 minutes by bicycle. Zandvoort is most famous for it’s formula 1 racing track and also the beach.

Sea Cottage Zandvoort

I got an offer to enjoy a romantic getaway at Sea Cottage Zandvoort, complete with a nicely filled picknick basket, romantic films and a bottle of champagne. As we’re still in quarantine and the borders are closed, there are not a lot of places we could go, and spending some days on the beach sounded like a lovely getaway.

We started our first day by seeing the flower fields in bloom, close to Zandvoort, in Noordwijkerhout. It was too early for tulips, but we saw daffodils, other flowers and lambs! We had an amazing time and then drove to Zandvoort to the Sea Cottage we booked. It was lovely, and the beach was only 300 meters away.

Amsterdam Beach

The package we booked included a picknick basket, with cheese, bread, donuts, a bottle of wine, some nuts and other things to snack on. When we had dropped our stuff off, we quickly grabbed the basket and walked to the beach, where we sat down in the sand and had a lovely picknick. It was wonderful.

We watched the sunset, read a bit back in the cottage, and came out at night for some kibbeling, which is something you have to eat when you’re on a Dutch beach and one of my favourite dishes. It’s fried fish with garlic sauce and absolutely delicious.

The next morning, we headed out to get ourselves some breakfast. We decided to go to a place called Hippie Fish because the photo’s of their dishes on their instagram looked absolutely delicious. It’s too bad that we couldn’t have breakfast inside because of the covid rules, because the place looked super cosy, but luckily, they were open and had takeaway.

We ordered the breakfast box for both of us and I got some coffee while we waited, whilst taking pictures of the beach and the beach bar.

When we got our boxes, we drove back to the cottage, which wasn’t all that far away, but we were lazy and didn’t wanna walk a kilometer back and forth, so we decided to drive. The breakfast box contained a strawberry waffle, a detox juice that sounded delicious but unfortunately, they were out of, so we got orange juice instead, and chia-mango pudding. It all smelled so good and we couldn’t drive fast enough to the cottage to have our breakfast!

And it was absolutely delicious! Especially the waffle. I don’t really care for citrus fruits, so boyfriend got my pudding and juice (maybe I should have just ordered the waffle?) but he was all the more happy for it.

After breakfast we checked out and decided to wander through Zandvoort some more, before our next stop. I hadn’t been here before, usually when we go to the beach we go to Zeeland, especially since my inlaws live there. But it was nice to have a change of scenery and some days off, enjoying ourselves and not having to do anything.