We are off to Antwerpen. We say goodbye to Matthias at breakfast - –it is so sad to leave without him! We will be missing our tour guide!
Our bags organized and separated, we leave the big bags at the Marriott and load our overnight bags into Gaby and Sigis’ car – and we are off to Antwerpen. Only one half hour – so close. It’s great! We park at the trains station and walk through. It is a great example of old and new – the old clock in the hall, the new trains, tracks and food hall, then the old original station hall with the glass skylights and French (yes, French, when everything is Flemish) engravings.
Out of the train station, we walk through the shopping street – with every store imaginable. It is a shopping mecca. Ed starts counting the McDonald’s. He gets to 6 by the time we are in the old town. Sigh….the Americanization of Europe.
But, the Centrum is lovely – grand squares and statues, a really beautiful city, when the first thing you think of is diamonds – really Antwerpen is so much more.
We visited the cathedral with 4 Peter Paul Reubens and lots of other Flemish artists’ paintings on display that had been returned to the church from museums.
Walked on through old town,to the Grote Markt with the gruesome fountain that is from a Flemish folklore. It supposedly depicts a hero, Silvius Brabo, who defends himself against a giant named Droun who collects tolls to move down the river. If you can’t pay the toll, the giant cuts off your hand. Somehow Brabo outwits the giant and cuts off his hand – the statue in the fountain shows him throwing the blood spewing hand into the river. Lovely!
We head onto the to the river where there are great views back into the city. Really everywhere we have been so far, the architecture has been fantastic– the detail, the sculpture, truly incredible.
We are now cold and hungry, so we star searching for a café for warm drinks and snacks. None of Rick Steve’s suggestions pan out, but we stumble upon Café de Kroeg and Eric (the owner). OMG. Cheap drinks, cheap snacks, Ed had a whole liverwurst for 1 Euro and Eric was an absolute hoot. Gaby and I had sandwiches – Croque Monsieurs that were fantastic. Sigis had Schnapps with his cappuccino. We were in heaven and loved Eric! He kept us entertained and fed for our entire stay. We warmed up, snacked and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves for well over an hour.
After our snack, it was off to Ghent. We walked back through the shopping district, found the car and headed to our home for the next 2 nights – the Hotel Carlton.
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