The Big Trip: Antwerp

11th May

We caught (yet another) early morning bus to Antwerp. We arrived at the beautiful Centraal train station. Luckily we popped into information to ask about the number nine tram. It would've taken us ages to find it otherwise as it was underground and labelled "metro".

We took the tram and walked through a beautiful park to reach our accommodation.

After we had a chat with our host Linda and went to the supermarket with her we caught the tram back into town.

We got off at Green Square and had some cheese rolls. The brie from the supermarket was really yummy.

Then we looked at the nearby Cathedral. Like a lot of buildings we go to see half of it was covered with scaffolding.

Next we saw the City Hall. Guess what? Covered in scaffolding once again.

After that we went to Steen. It was really beautiful.

From there we headed to the water tunnel. I thought it was pretty cool that you can walk to the other side of the sea under the water. They could've made a bridge but this just seemed so novel! Jay was disappointed that you could not see any water. I think he was expecting more of a Kelly Tarlton's experience.

View of the city from the other side of the water

After returning from the tunnel we spied a church. St Andrew's Church was the nicest church we'd seen in a while.

Meir Palace was now a restaurant and chocolate factory. We watched the cook but there wasn't much to see. A lot of weighing of ingredients.

The Meir Square was crazy busy. It was a holiday and a new Primark shop was having a grand opening.

From there we walked about 25 minutes to MAS. Everyone had told us that there was an excellent view from the top. We took the escalators to the 10th floor.

Tired we worked out how to take the tram back to the square and swap to the number nine tram for home.

At home we cooked potato, peas and onion curry with roti and raita. Yummy!

12th May

We caught the train to Brussels today.

First we walked to the Cathedral of St. Michael and St. Gudula.

Very impressed we walked to Grotemarkt (Grand Place) which is the central square of Brussels. On the way we sampled lots of chocolate. So yummy!

Chocolate designed to look like rusty tools

After admiring the beautiful buildings in the square we came across a lot of tourists.

They were all taking photos of the ridiculous and famous Manneken-Pis. We also saw the museum of clothing for the statue for free because they were celebrating the 1000 outfit for the tiny statue!

Next we saw Chapel Church followed by De Brigittinenkerk.

After that we walked to the Palace of Justice.

On the way to the Church of Our Blessed Lady of the Sablon we saw the Synagogue de Bruxelles. We stopped opposite the church for a break in the beautiful gardens.

Synagogue

We walked alot and saw many buildings which include:
Royal Museums of Fine Arts

Sint Jacob ciudenbergkerk/Royal Square

Royal Palace

Federal Parliament

De Beurs (Stock Exchange)

The Saint Nicolas Church

Saint-Catherine

The Eglise Saint-Jean-Baptiste Au Beguinage

KVS

Klein Kasteeltje

I had a Belgium waffle with chocolate for lunch. It was yummy! Of course I also purchased some Belgium truffles for another day.

After a really fun and delicious chocolatey day we caught the train back to Antwerp.

Lots of cartoons in Brussels

Thought she might fly away! Too many balloons

13th May

We had planned to have a relaxing day and go for a walk in the park.... But the weather wasn't good so it was SUPER relaxing.

Linda and her boarder Esable made us a Belgium breakfast. It was delicious. They'd made way too much.

Impromptu concert by a friend's daughter

We had a lazy afternoon. The only thing Jay and I achieved was to cook some food for later.

Just after 3 o'clock the four of us headed out to Lier to go salsa dancing at 4.

Before we went dancing Linda showed us around the town. First we saw the Zimmer Tower which featured an astronomical clock.