October 2006. Belgium. Part 3. Oostende.
Oostende. November 1, 2006.
Oostende is located on the North Sea coast, about one hour drive from Brussels. This was out last day in Belgium, and though it was getting even colder (North Sea, eh?), it was a nice day.When you approach Oostende on the A10 freeway from Brussels, it ends suddendly and takes you on a city street with signs "Free Parking" right away. Normally I would expect free parking to be quite far from the center, but as we are not afraid of walking, we parked there. When I asked a couple that parked next to us whether the sea is far, they said it's right behind the parking. Actually, what was close was port and marina, but the sea itself is of course next to them. The city, like many coastal ones, is stretched along the coast, with a long long promenade and lots of takeaway seafood snacks sold there.
This is the entry to Oostende port:
In the downtown you find a lot of English pubs and restaurants. It looks like the city was frequented by English sailors in the past. Now it's tourists speaking all possible languages.
In the city park, we saw a (working) clock made on a flower bed. One year later we have seen a very similar one in Geneva, Switzerland.
The Oostende railway station, seen in the background of the picture below, is located right in the port, for travellers' convenience. It is surrounded by marina with numerous boats.
On our way back to Brussels we had to go around the city by the ring freeway, which runs near the exhibition center, where on our first day we visited "Mini-Europe" park. We did not go to the famous Atomium, on of the symbols of Brussels, and we decided to try it on our last day. When I saw it in 2001 is was extremely unattractive, looking dusty and old. Five years later it was all shiny after the reconstruction. Unfortunately, that was the first day of some exhibition and it was so crowded that we would have to wait at least one hour just to get in.
When going to the exhibition park, I asked some teenager for directions. The guy was from Dutch community of Belgium. I was always impressed by the mix of two cultures in Belgium, and I thought that most of people there speak both languages, but this one did not speak French at all. Something similar you can see in Switzerland, but it's more separated there, while in Brussels you have funny mixture of both Dutch and French (excluding immigrants).
Part 1: Wavre and Brussels. Part 2: Villers Abbey and Leuven.