Zeebrugge and Knokke, the Real Belgian Countryside (part II)

OK, so it's President's day and I'm fast approaching the year's anniversary of our actual trip to Europe. My classes have caused the blog to be neglected, largely due to my claim that I don't have the time. The truth of the matter is I'm frequently bloviating about whatever on Facebook and wasting time in probably unnecessary discourse with people on the politics of the day largely because I'm a politics geek, and I find it fun to say the least. But if I'm willing to burn time on that I might as well wrap the overdue posts on this travel blog.

Zeebrugge and Knokke, are two towns in Belgium that in theory Kate and I thought would be interesting to see. Many posts online billed them as the beautiful Belgian coast which many different Europeans flock to on holiday. As mentioned in the last post, following Ostend, Belgium, we boarded a light rail line called De Kusttram, which reminds you of a more modern version of the green line trolleys in Boston. The tram is reportedly the longest in the world, following the entire Belgian coast. We decided to pick a town to go to along the coast that we thought would be interesting to walk around in.

I turned out there were a couple stops for Zeebruges which added some confusion. Of course I was down with winging it and just picking which ever one looked best. But a woman on the train insisted that she tried asking the driver the question, who of course had no idea what she was saying. So there was all of this unnecessary stress, and I just sat in my niche on the packed train rolling my eyes, while Kate tried to speak in broken dutch to the conductor who was rather busy with trying to get people where they want to go on time. I shifted uncomfortably. The driver seemed to think it was really weird that we wanted to go to Zeebruges, and I think we should have seen that as an omen of things to come.

From internet testimonials and guidebooks, we decided upon Zeebrugges (New Brugges) which was supposed to have a nice breakwater we could walk out on. I don't know if we never found the breakwater, or if its just that the breakwater was nothing more than landfill that locked in the marina, lets just say Zeebrugges wasn't what we hoped it would be.

Zeebrugges is an industrial port with a large un-scenic marina. There is a navy base there and the submarine (above) was a sight that you could tour, however since it was Monday (5/16/11) it was closed since tourist attractions are closed for some reason on Mondays. I guess it actual makes sense when you think about it. People go out on the weekends, but the Belgian government probably is still providing people with a day of rest. Seems like it would be smarter just to have it on some arbitrary day, but whatever.

We walked near the base for a while, but thought we might end up being somewhere where we don't belong, and ultimately headed east, back towards the beach and the board walk. Knokke was in theory only a few miles away, so we came up with our second great idea of the day (Zeebrugges being the first) to head to Knokke on foot. Most of the coastline was densely populated with 10-20 story high rises which I can only assume are a mixture of hotels, year round dwellings, including apartments, condos, and possibly time shares. The north coast was a complete ghost town, where you could essentially hear your own breathing. We saw locals roller blading, biking, and jogging, and the rare kite fliers and children about, but they were far and few between.

(In this picture notice behind the glass wall there are little sheds, these line the beach and people actually own them, and rent them to keep beach supplies, etc in the summer when they come to the North coast. I thought it was something incredibly unique to the North Sea which I had not seen anywhere else.)

(Kate above taking in the scenic beauty of the park)

Just prior to getting to Knokke there was a break in the span of high rises with a small nature preserve. We took the opportunity to hike up the hill (probably just part of the large dike that is the Belgian coast) and lounged about for a minute. We spent our time wondering how far away Knokke actually was, and Kate was beginning to gripe about how we should have just spent more time in Brugges. I was generally good, and took it in stride, it was interesting even if not ideally how I wanted to be spending my vacation. However, to be a pest, I could not resist the urge to begin calculating the hypothetical monetary value of our time spent in Zeebrugges and Knokke.

(Eh... what the heck, you can walk on the beach- but don't try anything else!)

Knokke was literally right around the corner. We hopped on the main road, went maybe a half a mile and found the end line terminal of the tram. This didn't come without some concerns along the way as we walked through the sleepy neighborhoods, which were all exceptionally clean. If there is one thing to mention about the Belgians, is they keep their communities looking spotless, which was a nice change after Amsterdam, which was a mess, easily giving any less travelled portion of urban USA a run for its money in trash .

(One of the typical sleepy Belgian roads we walked down on the way to Knokke, beware the bike lane!!!)

We began our trek into Knokke, making note of the tramway, and when the convenient times to get on to go back to Ostend would be.
The church below was one of the first things we saw when arriving in Knokke proper, and probably the only thing there that seemed older than about 30 years old. It greeted us right next to the tram station.

Knokke was completely deserted. It was supposed to be a tourist haven, filled with upscale boutiques, cafes, and most importantly people. It definitely did not have the people component. It was clearly the off season and was kind of like visiting Old Orchard Beach in Maine in April. A little depressing.

From here we headed back to Brugges to get there in time to eat before the restaurants closed up for the night. It would be a half hour or 40 minutes on the tram, and then another 40 minutes or so on the train from Ostend.

Ostend! The Real Belgium countryside?

After our morning in Bruges, we boarded a train to the North Sea. At the end of the line, Ostend is a city on the northern coast of Belgium. The enclosed harbor in the photo above greeted us at the footsteps of a dated train station. Due to harsh weather that probably lasts 3 quarters of the year, the Belgian coast is largely modern, unlike Bruges. Ostend apparently did not gain much importance or size until the 18th century. Kate had read about the Belgian coast and it seemed somewhat romanticized in many of the reviews and blogs kicking around the internet. We decided it would make an unusual side trip. The church below, Sint-Petrus-en-Pauluskerk, is very impressive to behold but actually is fairly new in terms of European Gothic cathedrals.

The North Sea below does not look very inviting. The water is very brown, I suspect to some degree it may be due to a lack of plant life/ algae relative to what I'm used to seeing elsewhere. Kate and I both made a point to touch it. It was pretty cool, maybe 50s F, or low 60s, and the wind was really kicking up across the water. There were some children running around, but Ostend was pretty dead. What we've understood to be a thriving tourist area during the summer, still had not kicked into gear. It did have a romance to it in a sense. The North coast is not a destination for people from the U.S., but rather is a playground for people who are relatively locale, and is apparently also popular with the British.

The boardwalk is spectacular, it did seem somewhat difficult to imagine it being warm there, but I tried hard to imagine some roller bladers coming by taking in the sun with out a care.

Below is the esplanade which is part of the Thermae Palace Hotel, once a major tourist destination is now generally thought to need a renovation. The architecture is rather grand, but something about it seems almost barrack like, it is sort of cold and foreboding.

Below is a casino/ entertainment center, I don't know if there was some sort of discount on white concrete when they built all these buildings, but I suppose it sort of blends in with the sand and the brown surf.

That dog is totally thinking this would be much better if I had a......

Waffle!!!! Tah dah! These totally lived up to my expectations. Awesome... Awesome... Awesome... and the ones Kate and I got were hot and fresh, not like the stacks of them we saw in touristy places everywhere in Bruges. I asked the woman running the shop how the Belgians preferred them, she was too eager to please and kept rattling off all different combinations. And I pressed that I wanted it like what the average people would get, and reluctantly she admitted plain, which I suspected from what I had read. So plain it was.

Kate of course had to have the chocolate, and you can tell from her smile that she wouldn't have wanted the waffle any other way. And what better to wash it down with than a lovely tooth rotting Coke Light. Mmmmm Mmm!

More beach sights, doesn't that just make you want to get your Boogie board and bathing suit?

Below is the road that led from the train station to the water. In the distance you can get a grasp of the dike that the boardwalk is built on. The water really does seem higher than the main land here and it creates a rather eerie effect walking up to it. These streets are filled with dull modern apartments and condos. Something about it had a certain retro charm to it and while this photo does not indicate it, there were stretches of this road that had a decent amount of foot traffic.

Some meats and salads inside a deli window. I thought it looked sort of impressive, and I felt like one of those weird tourists taking pictures of odd items.

After a couple hours in Ostend, we waited for a light rail to take us east, up the Belgian coast. Our adventure was just beginning, and will be continued in my next post. I will try to get it posted before my coursework supercedes it in my list of priorities. Stay tuned for Zeebrugge and Knokke.