We were one hour late but the lunch was good in Arnhem

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31/10/08 We got up at 7:30am for breakfast and too leave the house at 8am to make it on the 9am train to Antwerp. I had gotten the tickets from Amsterdam to Antwerp at a special rate for the weekend for 34.60euros each return. We could travel anytime on Friday, Saturday or Sunday and return anytime on Sunday. So thanks to me we missed the train I intended for us to catch by 5 minutes (the 8:56am to Antwerp) and ended up getting the 9:56am. We nearly got on the wrong train too - well it was going to Antwerp but a special train that you needed to book and by chance one of the ladies mentioned to us on the train that you needed to have specially booked a train ticket on this seat to ride. So eventually we did get to Antwerp and checked into the New International Youth hostel. We got the room without a shower (as in you used the shared showers) and it came to 98euros for both of us for both nights. With breakfast included. So I decided we should follow the route on the map for Antwerp produced by www.use-it.info. It recommended to go to this restaurant The Grandma - which turned out to have tasty Belgium food. I had this Bone marrow fried??? for entree and dad had escargots’. Then for the main I had whilst dad had. We were so totally stuffed that dad was dying in the evening how stuffed he felt. We met a Belgian guy on our table who was living in Antwerp and having lunch with his friend from Roosendaal - in the south of Holland. Apparently it only took 30 minutes to get here by train! I really liked them a lot they laughed a lot and were playing pacman on their phone. One of them recommended we go to this temporary Russian exhibition in the bank that he worked for nearby. After lunch we decided to check it out. It was located in the bank where the Belgian guy worked. The exhibition was part of the gallery of Anastasia Chizhova - which is actually located in Moscow in:
6, str. 1st Tverskaya-Yamskaya, Moscow, 125047, Russia.

The exhibition was probably not worth it from a monetary perspective i.e. you paid about 8e. But then again the dolls were really beautiful - it was dolls of the Russian czars (apparently only a part of their collection - I’m a bit bummed I missed it in Moscow) and some history attached - and I do always enjoy Russian history. So in that regards it was good. We stayed there sometime then it was time to go and we left. We did the rest of the city walk and visited some main churches and halls. I wanted to go to the Rubens museum but it was closed by the time we got round to it. We ended up seeing Antwerp - the old city then we headed back to our hotel and went to bed.

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