De Zandmotor, Herring, and the Girl with the Pearl Earring

Last Wednesday was a day of all-things-Dutch. Again, no kayaking. But there is kayaking on the horizon, so stay tuned!

Bridget and I made a day trip to the Zandmotor - a massive beach nourishment project on the South Holland coastline. Very exciting for a coastal engineering nerd like me.

But if that's not exciting enough for you, we also recreated a famous painting: The Girl with the Pearl Earring. Maybe you've heard of it? :)

8am arrival in Den Hague, the next big city north of Delft and the official seat of government in the Netherlands (but not the capitol - that's Amsterdam). I obtained my official residence and work permit documents before we commenced the day's fun. We hopped on bus #24 towards Kijkduin (which literally means "Look Dune") - a small coastal town which seemed to be driven primarily by beach tourism. We hid in a postcard shop from a brief rain shower, during which Bridget purchased a variety of slightly inappropriate postcards: friends of Bridget: watch out.

Downtown Den Haag (The Hague)

De Zandmotor (The Sand Engine)

5-mile walk around the Sand Engine

We then began walking along the beach boardwalk toward the Zandmotor (known in English as the Sand Engine), an incredibly wide beach that protrudes from the adjacent shorelines. This was constructed in 2011 by placing a massive amount of sand along this 2 km stretch of coast. While beaches are often "nourished" by placing sand to widen the beach, this is unsual in the shear volume of sand that was placed. The beach erodes over time as breaking waves push sand downstream, widening beaches further down the coast. The idea was to place a lot of sand instantaneously and infrequently rather than more typical annual/frequent beach nourishment schemes, which have pretty big impacts on the dune, beach, and subtidal ecosystems. The Dutch believe this is better for the ecology and environmental impacts, and it's a pretty creative idea. You also don't have to manually place sand on all the beaches downstream since the sand eroded from this extra-wide beach will keep those wider. Since this is really the first of it's kind, there are extensive monitoring programs in place, with wave buoys, camera systems, and survey crews. I almost accepted a PhD position to study the waves and rip currents around this nourishment a couple years ago, so I was excited to visit it soon after arriving! 

The entire beach was strewn with small shells. I'm not sure whether these came with the sand that was placed on the beach (most likely?) or whether they were deposited there later on.

Click photos to enlarge...

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Recreating a Famous Painting

When we returned to Den Hague, we tried out the local fare: raw herring fillet on white roll, smothered in onions. Never has anything smelled so fishy. Can't really endorse this one with much enthusiasm, though we did finish the entire sandwich.

Fast forward, and we're back in Delft for the evening. We've seen advertisements all around the city for $15 Girl with the Pearl Earring portraits (the painting by Vermeer, who lived in Delft). Bridget, Elizabeth, and I decided that we could do this ourselves, so with the help of some white wine, we managed to pull together this portrait in ~15 minutes. Thanks to Elizabeth for setting the black background *sheet*, Bridget for being an excellent photographer who held the camera still between excessive giggling, and both of you for getting that ridiculous head wrap to stay on my head :)