Day 17 - Antwerp, Belgium

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Morning: Woke up at abt 9.45am & got ready slowly cos it will be a late nite today. Anyway we've already seen most of Antwerp yesterdayso we've no rush to catch anything else.

Afternoon: At about 1pm, we left the apartment & headed to the streets toward the shopping area. Yuri recommended a nice coffee house & we went there to try it out. It's good indeed! After that short coffee break, we walked on to the Justice Palace at one end of the city. It's nothing like the old huge building in Brussels but a modern architecture that resembles our own Esplanade really only they have really large spikes instead of many small ones. Actually it was not impressive at all and I didnt even want to take any photos of it. We decided to make up for the long trip there by walking back along the port. We started to observe the nice posh apartments along the port and especially the top floors penthouses and of course start fantasizing abt staying in there. Reached back to the shopping street and we venture into some of the unique and interesting shops that sells handmade items and bought a nice pouch from there, the bonus is the shopkeeper helped to wrap the pouch very beautifully into a nice gift w a lollipop attached to it, i thot that was a nice touch...Then we started getting hungry and walked around to seek some food, found a popular fries shop and we settled down outside and ate fish & chips for lunch. We headed off in different places as I want to shop at H&M and WY would like to visit the supermkt, so we jus make our own way back to Yuri's place by 6pm.

Night: Cos due to the huge crowd in H&M, i got stalled and had to rush back without buying anything before 6pm. Off we go to Yuri's Tai-Chi class to take part in it, usually it's taught by his master but today he will be teaching the class and we are lucky to be able to join in and learn some moves. We warmed up and did some breathing techniques and also basic pushing hands which was quite fun, then Yuri ended w a show of his sword-playing moves which was really impressive to see a Belgian guy so interested in our Chinese martial arts. We walked back after class and bought take-away Asian food jus to add on to the atmosphere and we watched a stand-up comedian's DVD before making a move to the next destination. We left at abt 10pm to Yuri's friend's pub cos he's practicing his DJ skills there. The pub is called Izzy Maze and it's kind of like a Reggae pub w Ziggy's photo on the wall. The owner Izzy is from Nigeria and he's opened the pub for about 8 years already, very funny and cheerful guy so we chatted straight away as Yuri went ahead to set up his set. Met another couchsurfing host called Bert and he kept talking to us all night long which I kind of switched off after a while. We hanged out till about 3am and we were getting really tired, especially after drinking a fair bit. So we said our goodbyes and start to walk back and it was really windy and chilly. Glad to reach back to the apartment finally and quickly washed up and slept soundly, knowing tmr we will not be able to leave early...

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