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In pictures, I'd like to share the last of our photos at Oostende and then getting back to our hotel, as we had to leave early and get to Amsterdam for our early-morning flight.
Here's what it looks like when you'd think you could just hop onto a drawbridge as it closes. I bet if you tried all sorts of people would be tense at you, though.
And we're back and traffic can move freely again!
Under the overhang here are those portals to the bicycle dimension, and far in the background is De Lijn.
Unfortunately they have vehicle-wrapping advertisements in Belgium too, but at least the ones in Dutch read funny. (It translates something like 'So that's the taste of pleasure'.)
Here's our train! It looks so very narrow but it's an extremely normal size once you're in.
Unfortunately the ride back was so packed there was no good photograph-taking, or even sitting. But we got back to our home station and hey, here's that blue ring again!
Statue standing outside the welkom-in-De-Panne center of a woman who looks like she's seen better days maybe, but so have we all.
Also found in De Panne: funny supermarket names!
Really big fans of American television networks here.
And this was our hotel. I think we were on the second floor, so you could actually see our hotel room from here.
There comes a point where you have so much fire extinguishing technology on display at the hotel that it becomes unsettling. I know you're asking why that second fire extinguisher is chained up but don't worry, there's a guy comes around with the key every like five minutes.
The view out our window, which makes this corner of De Panne look like a SimCity 2000 location.
Trivia: By 1777, thanks to Lavoisier's research, France was able to produce two million pounds of saltpeter per year, with a yield considered the best in the world. By the 1780s it could propel cannonballs 50 percent farther than British powder did. Source: The Invention of Air: A Story of Science, Faith, Revolution, and the Birth of America, Steven Johnson.
Currently Reading: A Call to Arms: Mobilizing America for World War II, Maury Klein.
