After our morning in Bruges, we boarded a train to the North Sea. At the end of the line,
Ostend is a city on the northern coast of Belgium. The enclosed harbor in the photo above greeted us at the footsteps of a dated train station. Due to harsh weather that probably lasts 3 quarters of the year, the Belgian coast is largely modern, unlike Bruges. Ostend apparently did not gain much importance or size until the 18th century. Kate had read about the Belgian coast and it seemed somewhat romanticized in many of the reviews and blogs kicking around the internet. We decided it would make an unusual side trip. The church below,
Sint-Petrus-en-Pauluskerk, is very impressive to behold but actually is fairly new in terms of European Gothic cathedrals.
The North Sea below does not look very inviting. The water is very brown, I suspect to some degree it may be due to a lack of plant life/ algae relative to what I'm used to seeing elsewhere. Kate and I both made a point to touch it. It was pretty cool, maybe 50s F, or low 60s, and the wind was really kicking up across the water. There were some children running around, but Ostend was pretty dead. What we've understood to be a thriving tourist area during the summer, still had not kicked into gear. It did have a romance to it in a sense. The North coast is not a destination for people from the U.S., but rather is a playground for people who are relatively locale, and is apparently also popular with the British.
The boardwalk is spectacular, it did seem somewhat difficult to imagine it being warm there, but I tried hard to imagine some roller bladers coming by taking in the sun with out a care.
Below is the esplanade which is part of the Thermae Palace Hotel, once a major tourist destination is now generally thought to need a renovation. The architecture is rather grand, but something about it seems almost barrack like, it is sort of cold and foreboding.
Below is a casino/ entertainment center, I don't know if there was some sort of discount on white concrete when they built all these buildings, but I suppose it sort of blends in with the sand and the brown surf.
That dog is totally thinking this would be much better if I had a......
Waffle!!!! Tah dah! These totally lived up to my expectations. Awesome... Awesome... Awesome... and the ones Kate and I got were hot and fresh, not like the stacks of them we saw in touristy places everywhere in Bruges. I asked the woman running the shop how the Belgians preferred them, she was too eager to please and kept rattling off all different combinations. And I pressed that I wanted it like what the average people would get, and reluctantly she admitted plain, which I suspected from what I had read. So plain it was.
Kate of course had to have the chocolate, and you can tell from her smile that she wouldn't have wanted the waffle any other way. And what better to wash it down with than a lovely tooth rotting Coke Light. Mmmmm Mmm!
More beach sights, doesn't that just make you want to get your Boogie board and bathing suit?
Below is the road that led from the train station to the water. In the distance you can get a grasp of the dike that the boardwalk is built on. The water really does seem higher than the main land here and it creates a rather eerie effect walking up to it. These streets are filled with dull modern apartments and condos. Something about it had a certain retro charm to it and while this photo does not indicate it, there were stretches of this road that had a decent amount of foot traffic.
Some meats and salads inside a deli window. I thought it looked sort of impressive, and I felt like one of those weird tourists taking pictures of odd items.
After a couple hours in Ostend, we waited for a light rail to take us east, up the Belgian coast. Our adventure was just beginning, and will be continued in my next post. I will try to get it posted before my coursework supercedes it in my list of priorities. Stay tuned for Zeebrugge and Knokke.
After our morning in Bruges, we boarded a train to the North Sea. At the end of the line, Ostend is a city on the northern coast of Belgium. The enclosed harbor in the photo above greeted us at the footsteps of a dated train station. Due to harsh weather that probably lasts 3 quarters of the year, the Belgian coast is largely modern, unlike Bruges. Ostend apparently did not gain much importance or size until the 18th century. Kate had read about the Belgian coast and it seemed somewhat romanticized in many of the reviews and blogs kicking around the internet. We decided it would make an unusual side trip. The church below, Sint-Petrus-en-Pauluskerk, is very impressive to behold but actually is fairly new in terms of European Gothic cathedrals.
The North Sea below does not look very inviting. The water is very brown, I suspect to some degree it may be due to a lack of plant life/ algae relative to what I'm used to seeing elsewhere. Kate and I both made a point to touch it. It was pretty cool, maybe 50s F, or low 60s, and the wind was really kicking up across the water. There were some children running around, but Ostend was pretty dead. What we've understood to be a thriving tourist area during the summer, still had not kicked into gear. It did have a romance to it in a sense. The North coast is not a destination for people from the U.S., but rather is a playground for people who are relatively locale, and is apparently also popular with the British.
The boardwalk is spectacular, it did seem somewhat difficult to imagine it being warm there, but I tried hard to imagine some roller bladers coming by taking in the sun with out a care.
Below is the esplanade which is part of the Thermae Palace Hotel, once a major tourist destination is now generally thought to need a renovation. The architecture is rather grand, but something about it seems almost barrack like, it is sort of cold and foreboding.
Below is a casino/ entertainment center, I don't know if there was some sort of discount on white concrete when they built all these buildings, but I suppose it sort of blends in with the sand and the brown surf.
That dog is totally thinking this would be much better if I had a......
Waffle!!!! Tah dah! These totally lived up to my expectations. Awesome... Awesome... Awesome... and the ones Kate and I got were hot and fresh, not like the stacks of them we saw in touristy places everywhere in Bruges. I asked the woman running the shop how the Belgians preferred them, she was too eager to please and kept rattling off all different combinations. And I pressed that I wanted it like what the average people would get, and reluctantly she admitted plain, which I suspected from what I had read. So plain it was.
Kate of course had to have the chocolate, and you can tell from her smile that she wouldn't have wanted the waffle any other way. And what better to wash it down with than a lovely tooth rotting Coke Light. Mmmmm Mmm!
More beach sights, doesn't that just make you want to get your Boogie board and bathing suit?
Below is the road that led from the train station to the water. In the distance you can get a grasp of the dike that the boardwalk is built on. The water really does seem higher than the main land here and it creates a rather eerie effect walking up to it. These streets are filled with dull modern apartments and condos. Something about it had a certain retro charm to it and while this photo does not indicate it, there were stretches of this road that had a decent amount of foot traffic.
Some meats and salads inside a deli window. I thought it looked sort of impressive, and I felt like one of those weird tourists taking pictures of odd items.
After a couple hours in Ostend, we waited for a light rail to take us east, up the Belgian coast. Our adventure was just beginning, and will be continued in my next post. I will try to get it posted before my coursework supercedes it in my list of priorities. Stay tuned for Zeebrugge and Knokke.
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