Belgium- Day 5: Oostende Day 3- July 9, 2018

While my husband K had a full day of ClarinetFest activities, my day was  freer. So, he got up at 7, but I didn't get up until 7:34. I took my time doing all my stretches, in order to make the day a little less painful. He headed off to breakfast at 8 and when I went down to breakfast at 8:45, he left for the day. The day was starting off mostly cloudy and 65 degrees.
When I went back to the room at 9:30, the sky was showing some blue. I took advantage of the hotel's WiFi to do some research to find places I wanted to visit today. The maid stopped by, but when she heard my voice, she left. K let me know that he'd heard there was to be a train strike tomorrow. Sure enough, there was. This affected my plans for tomorrow and I needed to be sure of train times. We'd seen that normally there is a train every hour to Antwerp and the same back. There would not be tomorrow and I needed to be sure of which ones I would be taking. I checked multiple times during the day to be sure the times hadn't changed. K said that dealers were quite upset, because many of them would be leaving town tomorrow evening and had flights to make in Brussels.
I left at 10:15 and it was cool.

FTD is here, too!

Sight of many ClarinetFest concerts.

My first stop was the tourist office at 10:32 to check on the Atlantikwall museum for Thursday. The clerk told me to get the tram around the corner and showed me on the map, where to get off. This took all of two minutes and I headed off again.

I doubt the one in Pais looks like this.

Next up was Spar, which is a grocery store chain headquartered in Amsterdam, and I was there by 10:37. The place was incredibly busy. We really like visiting grocery stores, because we are interested in what people eat and what products from here show up there. I found 2 packages of individually wrapped chocolate covered waffles to take home for us and our daughters. I was out again at 10:52.

 The Kapucinenkerk was just 7 minutes down that street and then a right turn onto another. Happily, it was open this time and I went in to find a church full of lovely wood. I contributed 0,20 Cents, as requested, and sat in a pew for my traditional prayer. I then roamed around with an English language guide sheet I found and really enjoyed snapping photos. I learned that this was the church that sailors' wives would come to to pray, when their husbands headed off for the treacherous North Sea. Thus, there were models of ships hanging and on a side altar, just as we'd seen in churches in the Baltic. Even though there is a St. Peter and Paul Church in town, their statues were here, too, because they are the patron saints of the city.

I had a tough time deciding what to do about the rosaries I'd brought, because there was a lady sitting at a table in the back. Finally, I decided to give them directly to her, when I went up to buy three postcards of the church for 1,50 Euros. Her English was iffy, but when she asked how much she should pay me for the rosaries, I was able to convince her that they were a free gift from my church. She said she would give them to the priest. She asked where I was from and what brought me to her city. She was surprised to hear how many clarinetists were in town this week.
Leaving at 11:25, I headed for the shopping street. I first passed through the square with the bell tower on one end. I photographed it and the gazebo in the middle of the square. The gazebo featured the names of some composers, some of whom I recognized.

My first store  at 11:35 turned out to be a fabric outlet that was below street level. I didn't see any fabric that looked unique enough and I recognized a brand of needlework kits from shopping at home. However, near the steps out, I found a nice little cross stitch kit of flowers and got it for 4,95 Euros. I'd looked for craft stores online, but this one hadn't popped up. The others were too hard to reach.
It was 11:45, when I was back up on the pedestrian street and my next destination, Flying Tiger Copenhagen, was just one minute away. Supposedly, they had dollhouse miniatures, but not so much. They had mostly brightly colored plastic items in various categories, such as toys, party goods, etc. I even made the painful up and down the stairs to the second floor, but nothing floated my boat.
When I exited at 11:53, I saw a nearby newspaper shop had postcards. So, I got in line with my two chosen scenes to pay the required 0,90 Euros.
At noon, I went in C &A, but it was just a couple of floors of clothing.  I quickly went to HEMA, which was household goods, kids clothes, party stuff, cookies, etc. This gave me a chance to look at duvets to see if they were sold in colors other than white. I want to make a couple for my Dutch houses and want to be accurate color-wise. The good news is that duvets and sheets are not always white.
Finishing the shopping area, I was down near the Mercator and turned right. I saw the Aldi sign that I had passed without seeing yesterday. It turned out that there was a butcher shop at the street and then you went through a passage to Aldi. We have one in our town and I have visited a couple in Germany. I went in at 12:29 and I was back out at 12:45. I found coffee for my husband and chocolate in the first aisle and roamed the rest of the store. After paying 4,28 Euros, left for St. Joseph's  5 minutes away.

You can tell they own Trader Joe's!

Once again, there was a pillar with a slot and a request for 0,20 Euros. I took photos of this nice church and distributed the rest of my rosaries at various spots.

I left at 1:06 and walked 5 minutes to Carrefour, yet another grocery. I was fascinated by the baked goods. You could choose a loaf of beautiful European bread and there was a machine to put it in to slice it. So cool!

Hotel has these donuts at breakfast.

I found a roasted chicken wrap for 3,79 Euros (you can tell when you are in a grocery, because the prices don't end in 0 or 5) and a Coke Zero for 1,16 Euros. Tax is built in, hence the weird numbers. I also got some bars of Belgian chocolate to take home for gifts. A grocery store is always a good place to find food gifts. I left at 1:37.
I was heading back to the hotel along a planned route, when I noticed it up a street sooner than my planned turn. So, I took this shortcut and arrived at 1:45. I found the spa and asked whether I had to take a towel. I did and the woman told me about lockers and how to get to the pool I'd seen through a window.
Up in the room, I discovered the maid still had not come back. I sat at the table with the windows open to cool the room and enjoyed my lunch. Soon, K stopped by to pick up his clarinet. I was clearing some email, when the cleaning lady finally came around 2.

Deciding that it would do me some good to use the stairs, I went down to the pool at 3:34. I did my water aerobics as best as possible in the pool that was only about 3 feet deep. I wound up walking it a lot, which is still useful. There was a whirlpool and it would have been a shame not to try it out, too.
I was back in the room at 4:17 to shower. Afterwards, I was doing needlework, when K returned at 5:55. When we left at 6:20 for dinner, of course we ran into 2 people he'd met.
K agreed to try a place I'd passed during the day, because I was trying to get away from Italian and this place had chicken, based on my translation of Kip and the fact that I'd seen a whole tall unit of spits. It was not far from the tourist office and was called Koekoek, with the subtitle Kip aan t' spit, which I figured was chicken on the spit.
We decided to eat inside to be a little cooler at 6:46. We were led to a large, heavy wood trestle table. The paper menu boiled down to half chicken with bread and choices of sauce and then you could order apple sauce as a side.  We decided to get the chicken without sauce and I ordered a serving of apple sauce. Each 1/2 Kip met brood cost 7,10 Euros and the applesauce (apelmoes) was 2,20. I was thrilled to be able to order a glass of Leffe Ruby (4 Euros), a delicious, fruity beer I'd discovered on our trip to Ghent a couple of years ago. K ordered Bourgone des Flanders (also 4 Euros), which is a Flanders red ale-style beer. While waiting, we enjoyed looking at all the chicken signs that obviously came from the US.

When the chicken arrived, we asked for silverware and were told it was their "custom" to eat it with the fingers! It reminded me of medieval times and I realized the bread could work for wiping your fingers during the meal. We were given wet naps for after the meal.The applesauce was in a jar and we did get a spoon for that. As a business model, we realized this really saved on dish washing.
The chicken was amazing! So tender and moist. The bread was delicious and the applesauce was nice and chunky. What a meal!
I braved the stairs to go down to the restroom after the meal to do a thorough washing of the hands. We then left at 7:30, and K, unsurprisingly, recognized people he knew. After they chatted a bit, we headed for the promenade. It was now greyer and the wind was colder.
Since K had time, we walked down to see the outside of  Disney Sand Magic. There were not nearly as many people on the promenade as there had been on the weekend. We were close by, when K had to leave at 7:55 to go in the Casino Kursaal for the evening's concert.

I stopped further on to post on Facebook. Then, I stopped to watch some dancers and drummers and took video of them. Quite a sight! They were right by the Leopold statue and at the sand side of the promenade was an ice cream truck. I got a Magnum Double Chocolate, which I've bought at my grocer, for 2,50, and started eating it on the 3 minute walk back to the hotel, which I reached at 8:22.
By 8:55, it was totally overcast. I could still hear the drums.
K was back by 11 and we saw fireworks that had to be up on the beach. They have them scheduled for random days on random parts of the beach this summer. Actually, they seem to give a name to each part of the beach. So, I guess they consider it to be on different beaches.
The weather does not bode well for tomorrow's outing.