Ostend is Belgium's main seaside resort — a proper working harbour town that also happens to have a grand seafront, a pier stretching out into the grey North Sea, and a casino that looks like it belongs on the Riviera. The combination of mussels, Belgian beer, and salt air is hard to beat.
The town's most famous resident was the painter James Ensor, whose masked, macabre canvases prefigured Expressionism by decades. His house on the Vlaanderenstraat is preserved as it was in his lifetime, and the MuZee holds a strong collection of his work alongside other Belgian masters. Ensor's shadow falls across the whole town — you see his imagery in shop windows and on café walls.
Beyond Ensor, Ostend rewards slow exploration: the fishermen's quay in the early morning when the shrimping boats come in, the Albert I Promenade along the beach, Leopold Park with its 19th-century bandstand, and the Mercator sailing ship moored in the yacht harbour. Fort Napoleon, built on Napoleon's orders and never used for its intended purpose, sits among the dunes at the eastern end of town. The Kusttram — the longest coastal tram in the world — runs the full length of the Belgian coast from Knokke to De Panne, making it easy to visit quieter villages like De Haan or Koksijde in an afternoon.
The Langestraat is the main bar street; lively on weekends year-round.