I started my day with a brief early-morning stroll to the beach and back along some of the lovely older townhomes behind the massive new ones, but the proper beginning of the day came when we all convened for breakfast at 8:30 in what probably once was a day-round restaurant one the first floor of the hotel. The spread was lavish and we had a lovely time with both Continental (breads, croissants, cold cuts, yogurt, fruit, cereal) and almost American options (bacon, pancakes, scrambled eggs) and some apparently more Belgian choices: large chunks of chocolate from which to chop off a bit for your toasted waffle, and little tiny tubs of cookie butter and a kind of apple-pear butter alongside the usual jam and honey containers.
Then we walked the mile and a half along the beach to where Judith and Michael parked their car and set off to explore another nearby resort town, Knokke-Heist, because we mistakenly thought there was an older city center. But it was really just the modern apartment buildings, restaurants, and endless shops, so that was a bit disappointing. We relished that we found a couple of older buildings, but that was really all there was. But the weather was improving (clouds giving way to sunshine, although still quite windy and in the upper 50s / around 15 degrees C) and our next stop was a nature preserve a few miles further along the coast, right across the border to the Netherlands. We walked into the beautiful sand dune landscape there and saw several storks. Storks are miracle birds to me, because like whooping cranes, they had almost died out because of shrinking habitats, and as a child I rarely ever saw one, even as they were common in Northern Europe. Seeing several, including one on its nest with babies was amazing!
After we’d hiked the area for quite a bit, we decided to go back to the hotel for a coffee break and a short rest. In fact, we tried to have some noodle bowls that Judith had brought along, but they turned out to be the wrong kind–not the kind you add water to, but the ones you have to have a microwave for. Michael sacrificed himself and tried to make this kind with boiling water, but the result was extremely disappointing. We laughed a lot and had our remaining rolls and lemon cake from yesterday instead.
After an hour’s rest, we set out around 5 pm for a walk around the part of Blankenberge we left out yesterday–the many streets that have hidden architectural gems of the Belle Epoque / art nouveau era in between newer buildings. After a brief visit of the main church in town (St. Roch), we walked many streets in search of these, especially of the façades that use decorative glazed tile, and took a lot of pleasure in hunting them down.
Since we had such a late snack, we decided just to have Belgian french fries for dinner, and a snack bar with a pretty long line promised to be good–the double portions we ordered to share turned out to be enormous, and we were very full when we were done. We wrapped up by taking an old-fashioned walkway back to the beach promenade that was preserved from before the turn of the twentieth century, walked out to the end of a wooden pier at the town’s eastern end, and then returned to the hotel along the water’s edge, watching the seagulls and picking up the tiny shells that the tide had left behind. The sun was back out in full force, and walking with the wind in our backs made it a lovely last leg to our walk.
My phone claims that I walked over 15 miles and almost 36,000 steps today, but Mark’s phone says only 11.9 miles and almost 30,000 (I think his phone is shorting him, but if we take the average, it’s still over 12 1/2 miles). So now we are nice and tired and I am sure we’ll all sleep well. But it was a glorious day.