A visit to Antwerp

To see all the pictures from the trip, look here

On Sunday I went to Antwerp, Belgium for the evening with Rob and friends Andre and Astrid. It is still very strange to me to think of going to another country for an evening jaunt. Antwerp, the largest Belgium city near us, is about 1 hour away by car from our house. Sometime, people go to Antwerp just to see a movie as they have the largest movie theater in both Holland and Belgium. Some day soon I will post a blog entry saying “I popped over to Belgium to see the latest movie for a quick afternoon visit”.



In this case, we went as tourists, or tried to. Where the Americans have blond jokes, the Dutch have Belgian jokes. “How many Belgians does it take to…., 3 Belgians walk into a bar…”. In this case, they organized a “car free day” in the city center, blocking all the roads to the center, and also it turned out the 3 largest parking structures. There was no extra parking or shuttles, so we drove in circles for 1.5 hours before we found a parking spot. I think we used more gas to find that spot than if they had left the center open.

We did get a little sight-seeing in before things closed. We visited the oldest castle in Antwerp, built originally in the 11th century and remodeled after. There was a boat exhibition there, so of course we had to visit!

We then walked through the lovely old streets of Antwerp, to the main city square. We saw the largest church, from the 16th century, and the city hall displaying flags from over 100 countries. We also took a horse-buggy tour through old Antwerp. They showed us a synagogue-turned church – turned convent, the oldest restaurant (250 years old), and the high fashion street with Hermes, Cartier, and the top designers. After the tour, we went shopping in all the high fashion houses….OK, window shopping, but a girl can always dream….



We ate a very tasty dinner at an Italian restaurant. Strangely, though only an hour south of us, Belgium has a totally different food culture. The Dutch eat out much less frequently that the Belgians, so there is less variety (and many say quality) than in Belgium. Well, anyways, it was a very fun little “day trip” to a foreign country