Though only three-quarters
of an hour from noisy, crowded, bustling Ostend by the railway, it
is one of the quietest and most comfortable places on the coast
of Flanders, and can be reached by travellers from England in a
few hours.
Some years hence the lovely, peaceful Plage de Westende may have
grown too big, but when the sand has all been turned into gold,
and when the contractors and builders have grown rich, those who
have known Westende in its earlier days will think of it as the
quiet spot about which at one time only a few people used to stroll;
where perhaps the poet Verhaeren found something to inspire him;
where many a long summer's evening was spent in pleasant talk on
history, and painting, and music by a little society of men and
women who spoke French, or German, or English, as the fancy took
them, and laughed, and quoted, and exchanged ideas on every subject
under the sun; where the professor of music once argued, and sprang
up to prove his point by playing--but that is an allusion, or, as
Mr. Kipling would say, 'another story.'
The district in which Westende lies, with Lombaerdzyde, Nieuport,
Furnes, and Coxyde close together, is the most interesting on the
coast of Flanders.
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