Antwerp

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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 square (Grote Markt) and went inside a huge cathedral located next to it.

Ross insisted that we caught a tram to get back to the railway station which made us get lost temporarily, however we did find that in Antwerp they use magnetic swipe tickets similar to our Metcards although the trams themselves look older. There are no ticket machines located on the trams so if you don't have a ticket you have to buy one from the driver.

In the late afternoon we departed Antwerp and caught the train to Brussels where we checked in to the luxurious Crown Plaza hotel. This involved a short trip on the subway much to Ross's enjoyment. Brussels also uses magnetic stripe tickets similar to Antwerp. One difference about Brussels is that unlike everywhere we had been so far everything is written in French as well as Dutch.

Traffic Lights

One observation we have made so far is that traffic lights in Europe flash green instead of red at the end of the green walk phase. They also do not flash for very long, so if you are not careful you can get stuck on the road when the cars start.

Also we noticed that there are no secondary or tertiary lanterns at most signals with often only one lantern facing each stop line.

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