Why I went to Ostend

If this time last year someone had told me that I would be spending a short vacation in Ostend in 2016, I would have declared that person mad as a march hare. At the time I was of course still enjoying the happy memories of my Corfu adventure.

In fact, I was already planning a second visit of the island in 2016. Late November I went to the travel agency to book a 10-day stay at the Kontokali hotel - the same hotel as in 2015. Back home I called my ex-SIL who lives in Corfu to tell her I would be visiting her again end of May. She seemed pleased but immediately told me that she was looking for another job on the Greek mainland. In fact, at that precise moment she was on a boat to Thessaloniki to see a man who would help her find a job in one of the big hotels over there. If it worked out, she would be moving before Christmas!

To make a long story short, she did indeed move in December and I've never heard from her since. Both her mobile phone and landline have been cut off ... I made some inquiries, but she seems to have vanished from the face of the earth. I just hope she is OK and nothing bad has happened to her.

There I was, with a 10 day reservation on an island where I didn't know a living soul. All of a sudden the whole plan seemed less appealing. I also felt that my mother wasn't too happy about the idea of me going off on my own, with nobody to turn to in case of an emergency. So I cancelled my trip and brooded several weeks over an alternative. I didn't want to spend my yearly vacation, staying at home like I did in 2014. So I considered several options, one of which was Malta, where I spent a lovely fortnight in 1983 with my late husband, a few months before he was killed in a car accident.

Okay, I can hear you thinking "But you don't know a living soul there either." And of course, you are right. Plus, taking a plane from Brussels' airport suddenly seemed less appealing after the savage bomb attacks. It wasn't so much that I was scared to go to the airport and take a plane. It was more the severe, yet necessary security checks and endless queues that put me off.

The Belgian coast looked like a nice alternative. I considered several resorts: Knokke, Heist, Duinbergen, ... places I had been to with my mother in the sixties. And then I thought of Ostend. My last visit goes back to 1982. My late husband and I had just bought a new car and couldn't afford an expensive vacation abroad. So we booked this place, near the port of Ostend. It was a dump, but at least it had a large garage in which we could park our precious new car, a cherry-red Opel Kadett, btw. 

This is what the place looks like dd June 2016.

The old garage is all boarded up. The rest of the building still seems to be occupied,
 judging by the net curtains. I don't think it still is a hotel, though.

On one of our walks on the beach promenade, we came across this hotel. It was brand-new and 'you could almost smell the fresh paint' (as Rose said in the film Titanic).

My room was located on the third floor (white dot).

It looked awfully expensive. We were pretty young then and stood in awe before so much luxury. We swore that one day we would, when we could afford it, spend a night in this grand hotel. It wasn't to be ...

But this year I kept that 34 years ago made promise. I spent 5 nights in one of the recently renovated rooms - and yes, you could almost smell the fresh paint!