Seaworld Brugge

[Skyy Mansour]

In general, if you are curious about public transport in Belgium, you could just use Google Maps. The bus and tram schedules shown are pretty accurate. Trains are excluded though, so if you plan on travelling a larger distance, use our National Railway Company's website or our Flemish Bus and Tram company's website. Both include trains, buses, trams, basically all information regarding public transport. Pretty decent apps are available too if you want to search for information on the road. Search for NMBS (train) or De Lijn (bus, tram, subway in Flanders). They give nearby stops, departure times and itineraries can be calculated, basically any information you'd expect from such an app.

After querying it myself, going from Bruges to Blankenberge would take you about 30-40 minutes with bus 33. Bus tickets can be tricky, but you could use SMS tickets (number shown on most stops), buy one on the bus by asking the driver (more expensive and driver might not speak English, but is usually friendly regardless) or buy a 10-session-discount-card at local newsstands.

I'm not from around there, but as far as I know Blankenberge has a beach, Zeebrugge is a harbor, Knokke is the more poche part of the sea with richer people and a Casino, Het Zwin is a nature reserve, Bredene has a nude beach, Ostend is one of the larger sea-cities, etc... I think going to the shore is totally worth it and you could use the Kusttram or "Shore tram" to drive through cities along the shoreline.

Brugge is actually a seeaside town in itself, through Zeebruge, it's harbor, which is a full part of the city.Zeebrugge can be easily reached from Brugge by train, but so can Blankenberge, Knokke, Heist and Oostende. Oostende has the most frequent train service. There is a tram linking all the coastal resorts, so you could just go down to one, and return from another.

Maybe this might help someone in the future: I ended up going to Ostend, which is roughly 15 min away from Bruges. That was the last train stop, so instead of leaving in Bruge I just kept going. It's a coastal city as already mentioned. Meanwhile, while there, I discovered there is a Tram from Ostend to Zeebruge which might be an intersting tour. You can then return to Bruge from Zeebruge.

Conceived for the beach of Zeebrugge, Star of the Sea attracts attention from afar with its voluminous form and peculiar chimneys. This weird monumental structure explores entanglements between art, industry, nature and ecology.

Star of the Sea echoes various architectural structures that one encounters when walking along a Belgian beach and the North Sea coastline: a bunker, a fort, a pavilion, a sandcastle or a playground on the sand. Yet Star of the Sea resists rigid classifications, just as its hexagonal shape resists a straightforward reading as a star. Neither one, nor the other, and at the same time many forms at once.

Artist Ivan Morison (b. 1974, Istanbul, TR) has established an ambitious situated practice that transcends traditional divisions between art, architecture, theatre and activism. His work is often performance-based and site-specific, existing as one-off events and large-scale installations and buildings in public spaces.

It hosts key north European shipping lanes and is a major fishery. The coast is a popular destination for recreation and tourism in bordering countries, and a rich source of energy resources, including wind and wave power.

The North Sea has featured prominently in geopolitical and military affairs, particularly in Northern Europe, from the Middle Ages to the modern era. It was also important globally through the power northern Europeans projected worldwide during much of the Middle Ages and into the modern era. The North Sea was the centre of the Vikings' rise. The Hanseatic League, the Dutch Republic, and the British each sought to gain command of the North Sea and access to the world's markets and resources. As Germany's only outlet to the ocean, the North Sea was strategically important through both world wars.

The North Sea is bounded by the Orkney Islands and east coast of Great Britain to the west[1] and the northern and central European mainland to the east and south, including Norway, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, and France.[2] In the southwest, beyond the Straits of Dover, the North Sea becomes the English Channel connecting to the Atlantic Ocean.[1][2] In the east, it connects to the Baltic Sea via the Skagerrak and Kattegat,[2] narrow straits that separate Denmark from Norway and Sweden respectively.[1] In the north it is bordered by the Shetland Islands, and connects with the Norwegian Sea, which is a marginal sea in the Arctic Ocean.[1][3]

For the most part, the sea lies on the European continental shelf with a mean depth of 90 metres (300 ft).[1][7] The only exception is the Norwegian trench, which extends parallel to the Norwegian shoreline from Oslo to an area north of Bergen.[1] It is between 20 and 30 kilometres (12 and 19 mi) wide and has a maximum depth of 725 metres (2,379 ft).[8]

The Dogger Bank, a vast moraine, or accumulation of unconsolidated glacial debris, rises to a mere 15 to 30 m (50 to 100 ft) below the surface.[9][10] This feature has produced the finest fishing location of the North Sea.[1] The Long Forties and the Broad Fourteens are large areas with roughly uniform depth in fathoms (forty fathoms and fourteen fathoms or 73 and 26 m or 240 and 85 ft deep, respectively). These great banks and others make the North Sea particularly hazardous to navigate,[11] which has been alleviated by the implementation of satellite navigation systems.[12] The Devil's Hole lies 320 kilometres (200 mi) east of Dundee, Scotland. The feature is a series of asymmetrical trenches between 20 and 30 kilometres (12 and 19 mi) long, one and two kilometres (0.6 and 1.2 mi) wide and up to 230 metres (750 ft) deep.[13]

The average temperature is 17 C (63 F) in the summer and 6 C (43 F) in the winter.[4] The average temperatures have been trending higher since 1988, which has been attributed to climate change.[16][17] Air temperatures in January range on average between 0 and 4 C (32 and 39 F) and in July between 13 and 18 C (55 and 64 F). The winter months see frequent gales and storms.[1]

The salinity averages between 34 and 35 grams per litre (129 and 132 g/US gal) of water.[4] The salinity has the highest variability where there is fresh water inflow, such as at the Rhine and Elbe estuaries, the Baltic Sea exit and along the coast of Norway.[18]

The North Sea is an arm of the Atlantic Ocean receiving the majority of ocean current from the northwest opening, and a lesser portion of warm current from the smaller opening at the English Channel. These tidal currents leave along the Norwegian coast.[20] Surface and deep water currents may move in different directions. Low salinity surface coastal waters move offshore, and deeper, denser high salinity waters move inshore.[21]

The North Sea located on the continental shelf has different waves from those in deep ocean water. The wave speeds are diminished and the wave amplitudes are increased. In the North Sea there are two amphidromic systems and a third incomplete amphidromic system.[22][23] In the North Sea the average tide difference in wave amplitude is between zero and eight metres (26 ft).[An average is a single figure, not a range.][4]

The Kelvin tide of the Atlantic Ocean is a semidiurnal wave that travels northward. Some of the energy from this wave travels through the English Channel into the North Sea. The wave continues to travel northward in the Atlantic Ocean, and once past the northern tip of Great Britain, the Kelvin wave turns east and south and once again enters the North Sea.[24]

The eastern and western coasts of the North Sea are jagged, formed by glaciers during the ice ages. The coastlines along the southernmost part are covered with the remains of deposited glacial sediment.[1] The Norwegian mountains plunge into the sea creating deep fjords and archipelagos. South of Stavanger, the coast softens, the islands become fewer.[1] The eastern Scottish coast is similar, though less severe than Norway. From north east of England, the cliffs become lower and are composed of less resistant moraine, which erodes more easily, so that the coasts have more rounded contours.[59][60] In the Netherlands, Belgium and in East Anglia the littoral is low and marshy.[1] The east coast and south-east of the North Sea (Wadden Sea) have coastlines that are mainly sandy and straight owing to longshore drift, particularly along Belgium and Denmark.[61]

The modern form of the dikes supplemented by overflow and lateral diversion channels, began to appear in the 17th and 18th centuries, built in the Netherlands.[63] The North Sea Floods of 1953 and 1962 were the impetus for further raising of the dikes as well as the shortening of the coast line so as to present as little surface area as possible to the punishment of the sea and the storms.[64] Currently, 27% of the Netherlands is below sea level protected by dikes, dunes, and beach flats.[65]

Coastal management today consists of several levels.[66] The dike slope reduces the energy of the incoming sea, so that the dike itself does not receive the full impact.[66] Dikes that lie directly on the sea are especially reinforced.[66] The dikes have, over the years, been repeatedly raised, sometimes up to 9 metres (30 ft) and have been made flatter to better reduce wave erosion.[67] Where the dunes are sufficient to protect the land behind them from the sea, these dunes are planted with beach grass (Ammophila arenaria) to protect them from erosion by wind, water, and foot traffic.[68]

Storm surges threaten, in particular, the coasts of the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, and Denmark and low-lying areas of eastern England particularly around The Wash and Fens.[61]Storm surges are caused by changes in barometric pressure combined with strong wind created wave action.[69]

c80f0f1006