Zeebrugge; Friday, 04 July, 2014

Turning the getting out of work at lunchtime on a Friday into a habit I headed up to St Pancras and the Eurostar across to Brussels.

After a chaotic check-in it was through to a heaving departures lounge due to the late running of a previous Brussels train. Thankfully that started boarding relatively soon after I got into the lounge making it a bit quieter. More thankfully it was just their train that had been delayed, mine started boarding on time and in fact was already closed up and ready to depart a few minutes early, though they still kept us in the station until our departure time.

An uneventful journey through the Chunnel and across to Belgium, I arrived in Midi and made a quick interchange to the Inter City service up to Blankenberge.

At Blankenberge I crossed over to the Kusttram stop and picked up a three day ticket from the machine which thankfully managed to spit it and my change out in enough time to be able to dash over the tracks to the opposite platform where the next tram was waiting (although looking at the departures screen showed the next one was less than 10 minutes away)

I got off the tram in Zeebrugge and walked the five minutes or so back to the hotel to check-in

After checking in I wandered back down to the tram to take it back into Blankenberge with an idea of having a bit of a wander through the dunes before taking a pleasant dinner on the promenade. Unfortunately, this was about to be taken to pieces by the weather

I got off the tram a stop before the centre of Blankenberge to climb up through the dunes, but as I did a gigantic flash of lightning and almost instant rumble of thunder indicated that the weather was about to break, spectacularly.

I managed to dash back down to the shelter on the tram stop only getting a mild soaking. As I got there a tram was arriving so I decided to hop onto that to shelter from the worst of the rain, which I thought would only last a few minutes.

35 minutes later and approaching the centre of Oostende the rain finally started to die down. I got off the tram and went for a bit of a wander around Oostende, but found that most restaurants were already closing for the evening – clearly the weather had done for passing trade. So instead I had to hop back on a tram and take the 50 minute ride back to Zeebrugge and a pleasant, but not entirely desired pizza in the hotel bar.