Ostend, Belgium

Ostend is a likeable, liveable seaport with lots of first-rate seafood restaurants, an enjoyable art museum, and – easily the most popular of the lot – a long slice of sandy beach. There's precious little left of medieval Ostend, and today's town centre, which fans out from beside the train station, is a largely modern affair, whose narrow, straight streets are lined by clunky postwar apartment blocks and a scattering of older – and much more appealing – stone mansions.