Blogs from Antwerp, Antwerp Province, Belgium, Europe - page 8

Nog even aftellen en dan begint ons avontuur in de V.S. en Canada... read more

Tuesday - May 5, 2009 Today the weather report called for rain and 27mph winds. We quickly postponed our longer bike adventure and decided to head to Antwerp on the train. Antwerp is East and north of Brugge and almost due north of Brussels - it took about 90 minutes to get there. We thought about taking our bikes on the train - and then biking around the city, but Antwerp is about 500,000 people in size, and we thought we would be safer on foot! I had two quilting stores on my list of MUST DO in Antwerp - so after we stopped in the Information booth at the train station, we had directions to both of them! (Jean was thrilled speechless!) The first ended up being a small fabric and yarn shop that carried ... read more

Major Seas all done (no offence Mediterranean) CS: Friday 27th March: We worked our way up the English Channel and into the smaller Dutch Westerschelde. We proceeded slowly up the passage which is very shallow in parts and into the river until we got to the lock gates at about 3pm. We had a longish wait to get through the gate into the port area proper because procedure seems to be to fit as many waiting vessels as possible into the lock area on each transit and we had three barges come through with us. The narrow lock apparently operates to keep the port area sea level constant despite quite significant tidal changes in the river. Going inside there was little change in level so we wondered what all the infrastructure (which is extensive - 4 ... read more

CS: Thurs 19 March: We were out of the river and into the Atlantic by about 7am. The weather is sunny, cloudless and the sea calm. Captain still wants to outrun bad weather, our current speed indicates an ETA in Antwerp of 27 March. The weather turned nasty during the night. The Low has obviously caught us, the sea is lumpy and a grim gun metal grey, the sky a grey canopy of low clouds and we have strong winds. The ship’s motion so far is not too bad; we’ll see how long it lasts. We advanced our clocks an hour overnight and on Saturday 21 March we advanced them another hour. The weather continued to build up over night. By morning just before light it was very bumpy and there was heavy ice and snow ... read more

Hallo, We staan weer 50 dagen verder, dus tijd om tussendoor nog eens een snelle post te doen op deze website! Wat is er nog gebeurd in de voorbije 50 dagen? Hééééél veel gelezen, lezen en nog eens lezen over de verschillende bestemmingen. Met kerst-en nieuwjaar hebben we een pakketje lonely planets gekregen die we ondertussen al doorgeploeterd hebben. Na heel wat bezoekjes aan de bibliotheek, het huren van video's en lenen van reisgidsen van anderen hebben we toch al een iets beter zicht op de mogelijkheden. Desondanks zijn er toch nog steeds bestemmingen die we verder moeten uitpluizen. Ook de verbindingsmogelijkheden tussen de verschillende landen (bus/trein/vliegtuig?, Wat is wel of niet mogelijk? Wat is het snelste of goedkoopste? enz....) en ook de visa vereisten moeten we zeker nog verder bekijken. Ook onze reisroute ligt nog ... read more