texel island

i survived the first week of intro to business. it's actually not too bad. my teacher came off as kind of a buttmunch at first, but i'm starting to like him. he's turning out to be pretty funny and cool. anyway, since last weekend was the last bit of free time e. and i would have before my business class and her scriptwriting class started, we'd been planning a beach trip for then almost since we got here. we could have gone to scheveningen, the hague's popular beach--which would have been a lot closer--but we decided to make an adventure of it. so, on sunday, we went to texel, a wadden/west frisian island off the coast of north holland.


(to get from leiden, the circle in the bottom left, to texel, the polygon at the top, took a few hours and involved multiple forms of transportation.)

we had to take two trains to get to den helder, a city on the coast, a bus to the ferry station, and--of course--a ferry to the island.

the ferry was huge! i'd never been on one before.


it even had a cafeteria...


...and a gift shop.


(and a parking lot, too.)

we hung out on the panoramadeck:






(it was windy.)

we made it!


to get to the beach we wanted to go to, de koog, we had to take another bus. the buses are timed to leave a few minutes after the ferry docks, but we ended up missing the one we needed because we were too busy trying to figure out which bus to take (irony much?). once we figured it out, we had an hour to kill until the next one came along, so we explored a nearby trail and stopped to enjoy the view.





we made sure not to miss the next bus to de koog. we passed tons and tons of sheep on the way--the island is full of them--but the bus was moving too fast to get any pictures of them so you'll just have to take my word for it.

the lonely planet guide to the netherlands describes de koog as "texel's tourist mecca with a distinctly tacky streak."


(the description is pretty dead-on.)

being a tourist wasn't so bad--even dutch people are tourists at texel! we walked down the street, which was chock-full of gift shops and restaurants (it even had a bowling alley), and followed the herd of other beach-bound tourists.



the water was hella cold, but we went in anyway.



lounging on the sand was kind of difficult because the wind kept blowing sand in our eyes. so we headed back to the street for lunch (quesadillas, mmm). we returned to the beach, but the sun was m.i.a. so we built ourselves a fort to keep the wind from blowing sand in our eyes.


(it worked out quite nicely.)

the sun ended up coming out again, so we went back in the water for a while. then we headed back to the street to grab dinner (dutch pancakes... i can't get enough) and catch our bus back to the ferry. we made it on the 9:00 ferry--the last one off the island--but we missed the last bus back to the train station, and this time it wasn't our fault. they time the buses to leave at 19 minutes after the hour when the ferry leaves on the hour and takes 20 minutes! we actually saw our bus leaving as we were getting off the ferry. womp.

so we got a map and directions for getting to the train station on foot from a woman who worked at the ferry station. we got a little lost but eventually found it. luckily trains run pretty late, so we had no problem getting back to leiden.

well, i'm off to paris today! i got in touch with j. and she's meeting me at the train station.

au revoir,
b.