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.