OSTENDA

I came to Ostenda after an afternoon spent in Bruges with a very dear friend. The plan was to see the sunset on the North Sea but before we enjoyed some fried stuff. Apparently it's very common in the Netherlands to just fry whatever is at arm's length and the Flemish are not an exception in this sense.

We then went to the sea which is definitely the protagonist of the town which, in itself, is nothing special. The colors of the sunset were amazing and I particularly enjoyed taking photos of different people passing by: a couple, an old man, a guy with his dog, a man doing stand-up paddling, two surfers...

We could have eneded our day with this romantic view but as soon as we learnt that there was a casino in Ostenda, we knew that we had to try. This friend of mine had already been to casinos but for me it was my frist time. I am always curious to make new experiences and so I thought: "hell, why not?". I have mixed feelings about our experience: we had really a looot of fun with the game (we only played Roulette) and we even managed to quadriplicate our initial sum (20 euros). However, I was greatly disturbed by the atmosphere that you could breath in there. Many solitary people, blankly staring at screens, sometimes without the slightest emotion (postive or negative) in their eyes. Next to us was a man, rolex at his wrist and in full suit with a woman patting him and caressing his har all the while the men proceeded to lose thousands of euros. Yeah, this was quite sad to see. But all in all, good experience and if you have the chance, do go to Ostenda for a sunset :)