Chocoland - Belgium - De Haan - September 23rd

We continue towards Belgium. To be reminded of The Hague a little bit more, we want to drive to De Haan (sounds almost the same) and find a place to sleep here. In Zeebrugge we want to do some shopping, but the bus is almost in the pedestrian zone so we decide to look for another supermarket. Then some guy comes up to us on the parking lot and asks if we want to go to Romania...mmhh, the bus may sometimes look a bit like a gypsy bus, but the fact that we are being shipped to Romania with it gets us suspicious...! We decline and go shopping. To get back from the parking lot, you have to get a ticket at the checkout, which is valid for half an hour...we dawdle, but we still have three minutes...or so we thought...but it seems that the boom gate has a different timer and won't let us out...so we have to go all the way back, including the countless cars waiting behind us, and then we just drive through the entrance and against the traffic, there is no boom gate there...sometimes you just have to change the traffic rules.

The campsite is very small, but incredibly well-maintained and nicely done, we are lucky that the boss happens to be sitting in his reception house at 5:30 p.m. We pack our backpack and head to the beach. Utter emptiness, hardly anyone around...we have returned to our oasis, after a fantastic and turbulent weekend. We enjoy a beer, let the dog run along the beach, and count the ships on the horizon. After that, we sit in front of the bus until midnight, munch on antipasti, and are happy that the weather is nice. However, that changes during the night and the rain returns...great!