Anyone who delves deep enough into the recesses of his memory is bound to unearth a recollection of some beach holiday or other: ponies and donkeys trudging over hard sand with cooing toddlers on their backs, colourful crepe paper flowers for sale in exchange for two handfuls of shells, spuming waves which try to knock you over… Those memories are fuelled by the many snapshots which are kept in that yellowed album or in that old shoe box of granny’s. That ‘holiday by the sea’ is stored in our collective memory.

The history of the Flemish coast and of seaside tourism is very colourful. That colourful past is brought to life, in a ‘fun’ way, at two museums. In Villa Les Zéphyrs in Westende-Bad, with a fantastic interior by top designer Henry van de Velde, you can personally experience what it was like to stay awhile at the coast of the nineteen thirties. Elsewhere, the brand-new "Kusthistories" museum in Middelkerke explains the whole story: from the coastal tram to the male swimsuit, or from the go-cart to the ‘choco-glacé’... State-of-the-art museum techniques and presentations will get you dreaming of times past.