Blogs from Antwerp Province, Belgium, Europe - page 16

No I didn’t spell it wrong, that is how it is spelled! I spent most of my day in Antwerpen - city of romance and diamons! The place is more comercialized, business and industry that touristy, still I had an opportunity to see some of the cities history, including the great wall of Antwerpen and of course diamonds! Oh how the sparkle...made me kind of sad as I did the tour of the diamond factory and watched a jewler set some stones in a ring. I thought about my grandpa and what he did as a profession. The rest of the tour was kind of a bust. I really wasn’t a fan of the tour or the tour guide and today it was cold, wet and windy; not great conditions. To top it off the internet ... read more

So, today, spent the whole day in Antwerp! Started out late again....(so love to sleep-in!!!^-^) So started off with the Diamond museum! I didn't know Belgium was famous for cutting diamonds and being the trade centre for diamonds in Europe! It was interesting to know about the history and how diamonds are formed and so on... they had this audio guide with..TOO much info!!! holy...felt like going on 2 lectures of diamond history! haaaaa.... They do have some pretty shiny jewels on display..too bad I am not too into diamonds, yet. haaaa! Then, walked into the city. Antwerp is the fashion capital and its TRUE!!! OMG... so many nice stuff!!! especially, recently I got into looking at leather shoes for some reason.......but they are so expensive!!!! " Anyways, things are way too expensive here, and I ... read more

Day 2 of the conference in Antwerp. The morning started with a delightfully filling breakfast buffet - today they had pancakes that were to die for - light, and laced with maple-syrup-like flavouring but without the stickiness, all topped off with a pile of cream! The day then proceeded with an 'exciting' morning at the conference - lots of work, not much play. For lunch, a few colleagues decided to head out to the waterfront to eat at a well known seafood establishment. Between the various colleagues, we managed to get a smattering of lobster, crab, fish and mussels - poor corporate expense cards were sighing from the bill. Now I'm not much of a seafood person, but I have to say that this seafood was actually rather tasty. I even found the mussels tasty enough ... read more

Today we moved on to our second country, Belgium. After a wet evening the previous day in Rotterdam, the rain eased up in the morning and gave us a chance to look around Rotterdam where we went down to the waterfront. In the early afternoon it was time to leave Rotterdam and the Netherlands and catch our first international train into Belgium. Unlike all the internal Netherlands trains this one was packed and we couldn't get a seat despite the train being something like 12 carriages long. We ended up having to sit with our bags in the doorway for the 1 hour trip into Antwerp. At Antwerp we used one of the lockers located at the station and stowed our packs and then went for a walk into the town. We located the main ... read more

...and the vacation fun was back on Antwerp was fantastic from the moment of arrival. The train station was the best I had ever seen (in my opinion, even better than Grand Central in NYC). There were pubs abound and the food was good. Our hotel was near the train station and what I'm assuming is in the party district. It was good and clean and the room was huge!! We stayed in the diamond district and so you can imagine the wonderful window shopping we did. We had forgotten about the football (soccer) championship going on last night and were happy to find an Irish pub (don't laugh it was fun and crowded) with an outdoor eating area to eat fish and chips at while enjoying another Belgian brew. After a few (Adam had more ... read more

There is so much that I feel that I need to say, stories I want to relate, happenings I wish I could convey, and experiences that I so desire that I could pass on but due to lack of time and word power I cannot succeed. In Paris on Saturday I had one of the craziest days on record yet. Saw the Musèe d'Orsay and let me just say that the impressionist paintings are simply spectacular. I found the seeminly chaotic brush stokes, that with the right perspective, melted together to form a structured and ordered composition. In this I found metaphors for life. Take a single day in anyone's life as a single stroke of the painter's brush. Stand to close, inspect that single day by itself, and it seems meaningless and unimportant but take ... read more