Blogs from Belgium, Europe - page 173

The Antwerp train station is amazing. All the platforms are in a massive glass-canopied structure, and the glasswork and architecture of the central station were almost catherdral quality. Good stuff. I wandered around forever trying to find the visitor's information center only to learn that all the signs pointing me around were obsolete, as the center had been relocated into the central station lobby. There's 1.5 hours of my life I'll never get back! I took in the massive Catherdral of Our Lady and the 4 gigantic Ruben's works inside, toured the Steen Castle and the naval museum therein, and also wandered around the huge shopping district, including all the diamond stores. All the while, music from the movie Snatch kept playing in my head and I had to chuckle. ... read more

Due to an unexpected 4-day weekend, I had to come up with decent plans for maximizing the travel opportunity. I decided to do Belgium; hitting Brussels on one day, Antwerp the next. Brussel's main attraction (besides the beer in general) is Mannekken Pis, who is about 2 feet tall, naked, and peeing. What a great reason for everybody to congregate from around the globe! I also checked out some dinosaur bones at the natural science museum and soaked up some art by Rubens at the Fine Arts Museum. Still don't know what dinosaur bones have to do with affordable timepieces. Arfeo and Katherine would appreciate that I sat down to enjoy a massive Leffe beer in the Grand Place square, overlooking ornate gilded buildings, throngs of tourists, and the towering City Hall while listening to the ... read more

Today we had to leave Brugge. We had a nice breakfust and set out towards the train station. On the way we walked to "the lake of love." It was really pretty there - lots of swans. We got to the train station with a bit of time left so Adam went out to pick up some more chocolates before we left. He made it back JUST in time and we go ton the train to Amsterdam (which stopped off in Antwerpen). In Amsterdam we waited in a timely line and made reservations for a night train to Munich. Afterwards we took a costly cab across town to the Van Gogh Museum. It was pretty cool to see his original paintings. Being able to see the texture of his strokes and ammount of paint used really ... read more

On our way to the Netherlands we stopped to eat at a restaurant that is actually built above the interstate. People driving to Germany enter the restaurant on their side of the interstate, and people driving to the Netherlands enter on the other side. You go up some stairs and then meet in the middle. There were actually 3 eating areas: a pizza place, a cafeteria, and a fancier dinner place. The building also had a souvenir shop, where we ran into friends from Katherine's playgroup. They were on their way back to Germany. The food was good and Katherine enjoyed the play area for kids.... read more

The best way to meet extraordinary characters must be when traveling by train. Rarely do you encounter as many lost souls, in transit to wherever they think they need to go. Most people reach their destinations without any significant difficulties, but it puzzles me how this category of “extraordinary characters” are not stuck in transit for all eternity. Belgium is probably not populated by a higher ratio of “special characters” than any other country, but it is here this particular event takes place. Antwerp station in itself is a bottleneck for the transport between Amsterdam and Brussels, being a non-throughgoing station, where trains have to enter, and then back out again, losing a significant amount of time. No excuse for the guy who gets on here and sits down next to me however to misjudge the ... read more