… the first down at breakfast this morning.

Just for a change, I had a good sleep with just one trip down the corridor, and was still asleep when the alarm went off. I’d been a-travelling too, but once again, don’t ask me where I went to because once again, it all disappeared immediately after I awoke.

Plenty of time for a quick shower and shave and then downstairs for breakfast bang on 07:30, to find that while I was the only person in there, several of the tables,including my favourite, were littered with dirty crockery and cutlery. I had to sit somewhere else

At about 10:30 I went out into town for my daily baguette. And as I came to the pedestrian zone, this sign caught my eye. It lists everything that you are not allowed to do in the city, as far as local by-laws go, and the penalties that you can incur.

So “use of alcohol in a public place”, “leaving litter”, “urinating” and “letting your dog foul the street” can cost you between €59 to €250.

“Being drunk in public”, “Being under the influence of drugs”, “fighting” and “the bearing of arms” will result in a court appearance.

And so you have been warned.

Americans like to brag that they invented the shopping mall – undercover shopping galleries – but that’s far from the truth.

The first undercover shopping gallery dates from the Middle Ages and is in Brussels – we’ve visited it on several occasions during the past. And here’s another Belgian shopping gallery, in Oostende. You never saw an American shopping mall looking as nice as this.

And why is shopping in North America so boring? Well, when you’ve seen one bunch of shops you’ve seen a mall.

I walked all the way down the pedestrian street to the docks to see what was happening down here. But never mind that for a moment – have you noticed the sky? We have a pile of blue sky there and not a cloud in the sky.

And do you remember that pile-driver that we saw in the pedestrian street on Saturday? Going past it this morning, I noticed that it had grown a little higher and there were a few extra bits attached. It’s now a crane.

Crossing over the road, I took a photo of the docks looking the other way. The sea is down there.

Also down there is the station building, although the trains don’t stop there now. They pull up about 50 yards short – you can see the modern roof of the train shed on the right-hand edge of the photo.

The building was also the interchange for the cross-channel boats. Oostende was formerly a very important cross-channel ferry port and in the period 1846-1997 all of the passengers passed through the 1913 building there or through a previous building on the site.

Having been to the Delhaize to buy a baguette and some grapes, I went for a walk along the promenade again.

When I was here in 2014 there was a great deal of building work being undertaken hereon the beach. And now, they seem to have finished it. They have erected a huge new sea wall here as you can see on the left of the photo. There was a walkway along it and so I reckoned that I would go for a walk down to the end.

From halfway down the walkway on top of the new sea wall, there was a really good view of the sea front.

I first came to Oostende in the mid-1970s and anyone who hasn’t been here since those days won’t recognise it at all. It’s changed quite considerably since the 1980s when I spent several happy weeks here with Nerina and again when I was driving coaches for Shearings. Almost all of the places that I knew have been swept away.

The port of Oostende had declined considerably over the last 20 years. The port down there used to be heaving with ships and there was always something going on.

However ferries no longer leave here for the UK since Transmanche Ferries went into liquidation in 2013 and the port installations are slowly declining. There’s just the odd cruise ship that calls here now – we saw one of those in 2014 – and there’s the odd ship laid up in there every now and again.

This is really all that you can hope to see today unless you are very lucky. It looks as if it’s a fishing boat, heading out of the port on its way to the North Sea.

Fishing is quite an important part of the way of life of Oostende and a great deal of fish are landed here. I talked about the fishmarket here when we went for a walk around the town on Saturday. It’s one of the major attractions of the town.

Here’s another shot of the sea front here at Oostende. Again, it’s all totally different from 20 years ago.

There’s a monument there – a huge one of a sailor looking out to sea and is a memorial to all of those who set out to sea and never came back. As for what are hidden by the orange covers, I really have no idea. I imagine that I’ll have to come back in the summer for a better look.

But you can see what Oostende is so popular with holidaymakers and tourists. The beaches really are magnificent.

The new sea wall, upon which i’m standing, will shelter this beach, hopefully from the wind and definitely from the rough waves, and this will encourage more tourists to visit here.

By the way, the entrance to the port is just there to the left, with the harbour entrance light on the end.

Here’s the new harbour entrance, with the new sea wall just here where I’m standing and on the other side of the entrance is a nice, new harbour entrance light that looks as if it’s made of concrete.

The entrance looks rather narrow to me and I suppose that it’s a good job that ferries and large ships no longer sail into the port. It doesn’t make for comfortable manoeuvring

So here I am, right down at the end of the harbour. I can’t go any farther than here and so i’ll have tu turn back.

But you’ve noticed in one of the earlier photos we had a beautiful-ish blue sky, and you will also notice that the further around we have walked, the more the weather has closed in.

As I was out here at the end of the sea wall, the weather finally broke and it started to rain heavily. That put an end to my walk and I headed back to the hotel. I’d been out for two hours, which is pretty good going just recently.

By the time I returned to the hotel I was soaked and thoroughly fed up. I’m not having the best of the weather. I made my butty and then attacked the next stage of my website – to write up what happened on my trips around the Trans-Labrador Highway in 2014 and 2015 – and hoping that I might be able to make another trip in 2017 if I can to see what further changes have been made since my previous visit.

But that wasn’t all I did – or didn’t, as the case may be. I ended up crashing out for half an hour too, as well as having a chat with Liz on the internet.

I went out for coffee at 17:00 but do you know – not a single cafe on the front in the vicinity of the hotel was open. Well – one was open but the barman said that it was closed. I had a coffee in the lounge in here instead.

For tea, I went to a falafel place that I had discovered while I was on my travels. It was pretty good too although, like everywhere else in Oostende, it’s more expensive than in Leuven.

So now, I’ll have an early night. Tomorrow is my last full day here and I have things to do.