May 19, 2009

Beach Ice Cream

Eating ice cream on the beach .... what a wonderful picture that conjures up in the mind. Children and adults alike love eating ice cream by the sea.

Why is that? Well, let's take a look at it.

To my way of thinking there are a few reasons for this but the main 3 main reasons are:
  1. Most of us go on a beach when it's sunny and warm and on a warm day an ice cream is a really welcome treat - cool and refreshing.
  2. Eating ice cream can be a bit messy. Let's face it, how many of us have never dripped an ice cream cone onto our clothes? I don't see many hands up in the air for that one! So where better to not worry about messing up your clothes than when you're on the beach - most people are in their casual clothes or swimwear so it's not a big deal to clean up any ice cream that's gone astray.
  3. On many beaches, even on those without major facilities for buying food and drink, you can usually find an ice cream seller that comes by during the day. Sometimes on foot but very often in a small motorised ice cream cart, these ice cream sellers doing a roaring trade.

Here's a photograph of one in Zandvoort where the beach stretches for miles on end, giving the ice cream seller a vast sales patch. It must be good business - look at how well organised this ice cream seller is with a tractor and beautifully attractive pink ice cream cart. Hard to resist!

Zandvoort, like many other seaside resorts, is abundant with opportunities to eat ice cream off the beach as well.

It has some great ice cream parlours and some of the best ice cream display cones I've ever seen.

If you know of a great beach for ice cream and want to share it with others I have left this post open to comments. No junk mail please - this is a serious blog for people seriously interested in ice cream. Thank you on behalf of all the good bloggers that are out there!

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Apr 4, 2009

Beach Sunset & Ice Cream

As my regular readers know, I love it when I come across people and places with strong ice cream connections.

One place I wrote about last year that seems to abound with ice cream kiosks, ice cream parlors and large ice cream display cones is Zandvoort, a delightful beach resort in the Netherlands. One of the best ice cream display cones I have ever seen was there - a smiling polar bear holding a giant ice cream cone of chocolate and mint choc chip ice cream! Read more about the bear and where I found him on my big ice cream cones post.

If you ever get the chance to visit the Netherlands, especially in the summer months, then Zandvoort is a great place to visit for a day trip or weekend.

The reason for writing this post is that I just came across a fantastic video of a summer sunset filmed on Zandvoort beach. It's a wonderful, relaxing piece with a soundtrack only of what was happening live at the time - the natural sounds of a busy summer's days coming to a close (during which no doubt many an ice cream cone had been eaten!) and the gentle sound of the sea lapping up onto the beach.

This kind of thing is what makes the Internet so enjoyable and such a positive means of sharing good experiences. Let's have more please!

View the Zandvoort video

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Jun 14, 2008

Ice Cream On A Sunny Dutch Beach 1934

You may well wonder what prompted me to give this article such a title .... what would make me want to write about ice cream back in 1934 and on a Dutch beach of all places?

Well, I recently stumbled across a photograph on the web which stopped me in my tracks. It's a sepia toned photograph taken on the beach in Zandvoort (Netherlands) with four people in the picture all dressed for fun on the beach. There's a woman smiling and sitting on one of those wonderful big wicker chairs that you rarely see these days with another woman, obviously a mother, also smiling and sitting on the sand alongside her two young daughters. The girls are not looking at the camera though - they're busy concentrating on eating. The youngest girl in the middle appears to finishing off an ice cream cone.

It's a happy, almost idyllic photograph taken at a time when the world knew peace, at least for a while .... but this photograph holds a poignancy I've rarely experienced in an image. The young girl with the ice cream cone in one hand and the other hand on her mother's shoulder is none other than Anne Frank, just 5 years old. Beside her sits her elder sister Margot and the bespectacled lady in the wicker chair is Mrs. Schneider who worked for her father Otto Frank. They are on a day trip from Amsterdam. It is a picture of innocence and genuine happiness.

Little did the Frank family know the horrors that lay ahead for them and countless others and of course 5 year old Anne could not possibly have imagined that one day she would write the most well-known diary ever published. It is a sobering picture and one that should serve to remind us all that we should take pleasure in every moment and treasure all the simple pleasures of life - even enjoying an ice cream cone on a beach. View the photograph on this page about day trips from Zandvoort.

This week saw Anne Frank Day - Anne would have been 79 on Thursday (12 June). I was privileged some years ago to visit the Anne Frank Museum in Amsterdam and it is something I'll never forget. If you ever get the chance to go you should do so.

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