The Scheveningen beach is accessible via city transit from anywhere in the Hague. We had come across the announcement that an international kite festival would be held here and figured it's a good occasion to visit.

Scheveningen as a place was quite unexpected for me. The beach area is bordered by beautiful buildings, a boardwalk, well spaced beach bars and a wide sand strip. It is inspired by every other city with a boardwalk. However, it does have two striking features.

Firstly, it is very well organized. Every other boardwalk on a beach I have visited has a rather "organic" design to the area. Comparing it to something like Boracay (The Philippines), the difference is obvious. Even after the famous Boracay cleanup, the beach bars take up an abnormally large area of the sand, the pathways to get to the sand are narrow and unclear and the buildings surrounding the beach are architecturally incoherent with each other.

The boardwalk is well-organized and features some interesting art installations. The sand area is wide and there is a clear effort to keep beach bars from extending all the way to the water. Moreover, the buildings beyond the boardwalk are beautifully architected and give the place a rather classier feel than other boardwalk areas around the world. The building in the background of the top picture is the Kurhause hotel.

The second striking thing about Scheveningen is that it is not immediately obvious why someone would build it. Located on the North Sea, Scheveningen has the typical Dutch weather. There is constant cold wind coming out of the North, that picks up the sand and drives it in your face. Swimming at Scheveningen beach is like doing a polar plunge while being violently exfoliated with a sandblaster. While probably healthy in moderation, it's not what I usually expect from a beach experience.

While the beach experience may be atypical, it does explain why the location was picked to host a kite festival. The wind is constant, making it unlikely that the event would be a flop. As only a casual fan of kites, I enjoyed sitting at a beach cafe for an hour, soaking up the limited sun and talking with my friends. There were quite a few kites from around the region, and it made for an enjoyable background event for the day.