We arrived in Antwerp, Belgium early in the morning, and when I say we arrived, I mean, we pulled the ship right up to the town. The angle below might do it some justice. You can see just how close we actually are to their promenade and the city itself. The man on the dock should give you an idea of the scale of our ship. These were shot from the seventh deck and above, from the stairs to the observation deck. Actually, in the first shot, you can see our gangway, obviously in its stowed position.
Once we docked and the gangway was put down, we headed to the Antwerp train station, seeing the stunning Cathedral of Our Lady (Onze-Lieve-Vrouwekathedraal, in Dutch). Several times while walking around Antwerp, we used the church--the tallest cathedral in Belgium--to find our way back to the ship.
Antwerp-Central Station was about a 15-minute walk from where we were docked. The city is famous for its train station, which was built between 1895 and 1905. It has four levels and fourteen tracks, and is a stone and marble wonder.
If for some reason you missed the 2009 viral YouTube video of a flash mob performing “Do-Re-Mi” in this station, you can see it at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7EYAUazLI9k
I believe the man above may have been in it.
From the station, we had about an hour and a half ride northwest to Bruges, a city known for its canals and--just like all of Belgium--you can find amazing chocolate there as well as friet--we’d call them French fries--with mayonnaise, and of course, Belgian waffles.
Horses are popular in Bruges, too, so if you didn’t want to walk or take a boat around, you could see the city by horse and carriage. I almost got clipped taking this photo by a horse going the other way. Thankfully, I was drawn to a nearby statue depicting one of the four horsemen of the Apocalypse. The other three are safely out of frame.
We walked for hours in this city, wandering, getting lost, finding our way again.
So farewell, beautiful Bruges. You did not disappoint.
The next four days, I spent in Greece. I’ll need a separate entry for that, but back in Belgium for the final day in port, we walked around Antwerp. It was a lively Saturday with markets, weddings, and musicians playing in the streets. Apparently, Mary was playing Hermes.
The more staid statue of Hendrik Conscience, a Belgian writer in the early to mid-1800s, stands in front of the City Library. It’d take too long to get into the history, but suffice it to say that Conscience wrote a book in Flemish in a country where the language of choice had been French. His father thought it was so vulgar, in fact, to write in Flemish that he kicked his son out. Clearly, in this case, father didn’t know best. Here, I’m posing for my statue. I’m sure there’s a library--somewhere--that will need it.
When our ship sailed that evening, we were sent off by a ten-piece band, and people waved goodbye to us the entire length of the promenade.
Statues are cool, I’ll give you that, but it’s the people that make the place.
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