Oh I do like to be beside the seaside...

During the school holidays Belgium rail offer a great service whereby you can travel anywhere in Belgium for 8 euros and children up to the age of 12 are free anyway. We are hoping to do a few trips during the summer as it's lovely travelling by train. We knew that today was set to be a glorious day so we set off early and caught the train to Ostend.
We started with a walk past the harbour before joining the promenade and looking at some weird orange sculpture things before going to the annual Sand Sculpture show which was Disney themed. It was fab as usual and after a cold drink and a play on the trampolines we hit the beach for some paddling, crab hunting, bat and ball and rolling in the sand and water type fun! We then headed to the water jets near the promenade to rinse all the sand off and have another play before renting a four seater bike for an hour to cycle along the promenade. I have to say that my impression of Ostend has improved massively from today as I wasn't too taken with it the last time we visited but I think we were just in a dodgy part (the promenade is about 66km long (I think) so we would like to take our bikes back and cycle as far as the kids will allow before catching the tram back to our starting point - perhaps a little trip in the autumn).

Four ice-lollies later and we headed back to the train, weary, sun kissed and very happy.