Noordwijk aan Zee lighthouse

The lighthouse on the photo, located along the Wilhelmina Boulevard in Noordwijk aan Zee, was built in 1921. The first mention of a lighthouse on this spot dates from 1444, and in that time the light was lit only when fishermen were active at sea. The current tower has 6 floors and a staircase with 108 steps. Visitors are not allowed inside.

Zooming in we saw a very pretty weather vane!

Lost and found

 

 A 'vindboom' or 'found items-tree' between the Queen Wilhelmina boulevard and the dunes of Noordwijk aan Zee.

It's mostly sneakers and flip flops as you can see ;) I like the initiative but wouldn't recommend to hang any valuable found items there..

Noordwijk aan Zee

View from the dunes into Noordwijk aan Zee. The town was founded around 1200 as a fishing village. During the 19th century tourism replaced fishing as its primary income.

Nowadays it is a popular resort town with over a million overnight stays per year.

Walk of Space

Since September 2013 the town of Noordwijk has a "Walk of Space", consisting of a number of tiles in the pavement of the Queen Wilhelmina Boulevard. With this they try to draw attention to space travel in general and their connection with it through the Space Expo: the town's permanent space exhibition which is also the visitor's center for ESA in the Netherlands.
The photo above shows the imprint of an original moonboot by Wubbo Ockels, the first Dutch astronaut who stayed inside the space ship Challenger for 7 days back in 1985.

Another one I'd like to show you is a handprint from André Kuipers, another Dutch astronaut who turned into a true national celebrity in 2011/2012 after he was selected for a 6 month mission to contribute to the International Space Station (ISS) project. The launch into space as well as his return to earth were broadcasted live on television, and there was lot of media attention for his stay inside the space station where he did all kinds of experiments and tests. Because of his enthusiasm the reports from space were a great pleasure to watch.

I'm linking to signs, signs.

At the North Sea coast

Before we visited the Keukenhof Monday a week ago we spent a day at the North Sea coast at Noordwijk aan Zee. The weather was more than perfect to be at the beach, it was warm and sunny and it felt like Summer; lots of people were sunbathing and some even went swimming in the sea. This photo was made when the tide was getting high; of course the sand castles that were built earlier had to be reinforced!

I'm linking to All Seasons.