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Published: June 17th 2007
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Antwerp
A view from the riverfront looking back into town. Happy Father’s Day! The kids got up around 8 and had a bowl of cereal. I got dressed and took Eliza to the bakery to get some special pastries for father’s day. Emma made a card and Abigail made some wrapping paper to wrap his new water bottle up (the metal kind; he was the only one without a water bottle). We were all out the door and on the bus a little after 10am.
At the train station we bought our tickets (6.80 euros each for Jonathan and I) and made the mandatory reservations for the Thalys train that runs from Brussels to Paris, which we will be taking on our trip to France in two weeks. We have eurail passes that are good for France but you still have to pay an extra supplement for each passenger to get on the Thalys, and it isn’t cheap! We got on the 10:35 to Antwerp and the girls played and Eliza caused trouble on the hour long trip there.
The train station in Antwerp is really beautiful. We got off and got our bearings, along with a big map from the tourist kiosk. We walked to a statue
Emma's baby Sarah on the train
Photo by Emma. The girls played with their babies the whole way to Antwerp. down the street a ways and parked ourselves on some benches in front of some beautiful buildings and had a picnic we had brought with us. We decided to make a game out of counting the different kinds of statues (some on top of buildings, some on pedestals in the middle of the square, some gold, some white, some green); there were quite a few. We walked the main pedestrian walk pasT hundreds of stores and cafes (this is a shopping and eating town) and ended up taking a side turn to a market. The market had, in addition to the usual goods, bunnies for sale. Abigail, in particular, was quite enchanted and really wanted to buy one. She played with and held bunnies, mice and guinea pigs.
We walked to the historic part of Antwerp and found the largest cathedral in Belgium, Onze Leive Vrouwkathedraal (Cathedral of Our Lady). Very impressive. While camera boy was at work snapping photos I read some of Pippi Longstocking to the big girls (Eliza was busy falling asleep in the stroller). Once she fell asleep we meandered to the river front and had ice cream and sat by the water. We found
the façade of a fantastic 13th century castle which now houses the National Maritime Museum, complete with a boat graveyard outside. Our walk continued back towards the center of town where we found a café to relax at and have a Duvel while the girls had a snack.
We had an early dinner at Da Giovanni’s. It was incredibly good pizza and everyone had a good time. Jonathan, Emma & Abigail all fell asleep on the train ride home, but not Eliza! We had fun bouncing around and we all got home at 8pm. It was a nice day and it all went very smoothly, thanks in part to the things we learned on last week’s trip. Antwerp was a very pretty city, but not as quaint as Leuven or Gent. It had all you would need for an eating, shopping & drinking weekend however, with lots of pretty buildings housing it all.
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