Antwerp

AKA Antwerpen, AKA Anvers...I didn't know anything about this city before coming here, so didn't really have any expectations. But even if I did, I think Antwerp would have wildly exceeded them. Twenty years ago, my friend E was an exchange student here, and when I was planning my trip she connected me with her Flemish Belgian host family--parents and eight (now adult) kids strong. SR and I stayed with N, one of the siblings, and were treated like family by all of the five siblings who still live in the city plus their feisty mother. They took turns showing us around on bikes that they loaned us, had us over for backyard barbeques, and in general just spoiled us rotten and made our visit unforgettable.

One night in N's backyard...

...we had a traditional Flemish meat stew and potato dishes.

SR learned a regionally popular game called korfbal, which is sort of like basketball, and even got to go to a lesson with N one morning.

We saw the Plantin-Moretus Museum, which memorializes a very important Dutch printing company, centuries old.

And in the square outside the museum, a weekly estate auction was quite the morning's entertainment.

We got to see (and ride) the original wood escalator (dating back to the 1930s) that leads to a tunnel crossing under the river on the west side of the city.

Then, walking north along the river...

...we made it to a recently revitalized area of the city, where the MAS museum allows beautiful views over the city.

SO many interesting old buildings, such as this one, which used to be a waterfront warehouse and now is a wedding venue that also houses the city's archives.

N's neighborhood is gloriously diverse, with one of the largest Orthodox Jewish communities outside of Israel...

...plus lots of Moroccans, West and Central Africans, Eastern Europeans. Really refreshing.

And then, the chocolate. Twice, N took me to a chocolate shop that specializes in hot chocolate and every other chocolate-y thing you can think of. Oh. My. Gosh.

The city also has this fantastic little pretend-beach area for the summer ("Summer Bar") where they bring in sand and boardwalks and set up lawn chairs and food and drink stands.

Plus we happened to be in town the weekend when there was a World Food Market. All of the family ladies and friends got together to gorge ourselves on specialites from Turkey, Indonesia, and everywhere in between.

Hard to tear ourselves away from such a fabulous experience in Antwerp, but Brussels (and more amazing hosts--we are TOO LUCKY) awaits...

Belgium!

Without ceremony, passport check, or any formalities at all, our train crossed the border from The Netherlands into Belgium and we soon arrived in Antwerp.

You don't even have to leave the glorious train station to get a hint that 80% of the world's uncut diamonds are traded here.

My next post will be all about Antwerp itself. But before we really started exploring that city, we took side trips to two of Belgium's other gems.

First, Bruges--which I had been repeatedly warned is picture-perfect, but everyone knows it and the tourist hordes are so thick you can barely walk through them. Both these things were true. Even the picture-perfect swans seemed to need a break from having their photo taken.

The streets were clogged with horse-drawn carriages full of visitors and the canals gave boatloads more another way to see the city. We battled our way around on foot for awhile, sharing a Belgian waffle far too early in the day to be able to justify such a thing (but oh, it was good).

And the streets of the town were indeed sigh-worthy.

As were the chocolate shops, as ubiquitous here as Starbucks in NYC. I might have stopped in a couple or a dozen of them and may or may not have purchased and consumed more chocolates than someone who has just scarfed down a Belgian waffle should.

Then we moved on to the less-intense-but-equally-beautiful, larger city of Ghent, which was a little more our pace.

We spent a couple hours just sitting at a café table out in a busy pedestrian area, people-watching and enjoying the atmosphere. (Me eating more chocolate and drinking some too, while SR embarked upon a project of trying as many different Belgian beers as he can during the week we are here.)

Not a bad way to spend an afternoon.

And then as we were wandering back toward the train station, we came upon an ambulance and some crisply dressed nuns, and something appeared to be on fire, and it turned out that we'd stumbled up on the filming of a movie scene! It was for a movie called "Emperor," apparently starring Adrian Brody. So we watched that for awhile before calling it a day. A great day.

The Netherlands II

Packing a lot into this post! SR and I have been making tracks around The Netherlands from our home base in Utrecht. We wandered around lovely Delft...

 

 

...saw the funky architecture (and street art) of Rotterdam...

 ....and then took a waterbus to Dordrecht...

 

...all in one day! (Thanks, Eurail Pass...)

We also spent a second day in Amsterdam, trying to ignore a consistent grey drizzle by hopping from one museum to another. We saw six of them in a day (my favorite was Rembrandt's house and studio), but still arrived home quite soggy. Then we took a fieldtrip (on another rainy day) out to Arnhem and then to the gates of Veluwe National Park, but hit some travel bumps along the way, oversleeping and then getting on the wrong train, so that by the time we got to the park and learned that there was no point in going in unless we had at least 2.5 hours to spend there, we had to abort the visit. Oh, well! Some days work out, others don't.

While all of this gallivanting around NL was really nice, our home base of Utrecht was really one of the highlights of our week in the country. I loved getting on a bike every morning to pedal to the train station and pedaling back on the same streets each evening, along canals, on the friendly bike lanes. And the more we explored the town itself, the more I liked it.

I don't have a picture of it, but we took a tour of the before-its-time Rietveld Schroder House, which was fascinating. We also explored the gardens of the Dom Church, admired Dom Tower (the highest in The Netherlands!)...

...and climbed all 465 stairs to the top, stopping along the way to appreciate the massive, still operational bells hanging impressively high up in the tower...

...and loving the view from the top, which gave me an even better appreciation for Utrecht.

I would happily stay here longer, but an entire week of our 4.5-week trip has already flown by, and it is time to head south to the land of beer (SR's favorite thing) and chocolate (my favorite thing). See you soon in Belgium!

The Netherlands - Amsterdam and Den Haag

From Ireland, on to Continental Europe, for the first time since I studied abroad in Italy...18 (ahem) years ago! Can't believe it's been that long, and I'm SO excited to be back, not only to revisit Italy but to see a handful of new (for me) countries along the way.

SR flew in from the States to meet me in Amsterdam, so we are starting out in the Netherlands and making a more or less southbound path to Italy over the next month.

As mentioned, the design of this trip revolves around visiting friends and friends of friends. And thanks to Peace Corps Morocco friend L's very international wedding a few years ago, I have a very sweet Dutch contact, J. In a stroke of timing both unfortunate and perfect, J was leaving for a week of summer holiday shortly after our arrival in her native land. Not much time to spend with her, but the offer of her apartment to use for our week in NL was priceless.

So we arrived to her hometown of Utrecht and had one evening with her to get the nitty gritty of locations of grocery stores, laundry, the bikes she had for us to borrow, the route to the town center, and to share a drink at one of her preferred spots...

...before she went off on vacation, and SR and I began doing as the Dutch do, hopping on bikes every day for the 20-min ride into town.

More on Utrecht itself later, but the train station gave us insanely easy connections to many iconic places, so let's start there. First:
AMSTERDAM!
Such a fun city. My feet were exhausted after we'd made tracks through Vondelpark, Museumplein...

...Rijksmuseum (with its most famous painting, Rembrant's "The Night Watch")...

...and, my favorite part of the day (not only because it was a rest for my tired feet), a small boat tour of Amsterdam by canal.

We got to see a ton of the city center this way...

...plus hear great stories from our guide about Amsterdam's history and character. And characters. Oh, and check out the tiny little bright red house in the middle of this picture. One of the smallest houses in the city, which is saying something since people were motivated to make their houses narrow and tall thanks to a property tax system that went by how much street front sidewalk your building covered.

We'll be spending a bit more time in Amsterdam before we head south for good, but for now we took a break from that overwhelming mecca to check out Den Haag (aka The Hague). Den Haag has an even more international, though slightly less frenetic feel to it than Amsterdam. Its Mauritshuis Museum features Vermeer's masterpiece "Girl With a Pearl Earring," which was beautiful to see in person.

And I enjoyed just wandering the city, with its buildings and people of every size and color.

We were definitely still in the Netherlands, though, as evidenced by the typical bike parking outside the train station. #($^%&*#^%#*#! I guess it's WAAAAAYYYY better than this many cars would be! But still overwhelming.

As chance would have it, a South Pole friend, M, just arrived in Den Haag on a new work contract, so we got to have dinner with him (and a couple of his very sweet housemates, not pictured--but a shout-out to you, K&N!).

They took us to the city beachfront for eats and fireworks. It was quite a scene, both without the crowds and then, later, with people blanketing the place.

We also got to see the rock garden in front of the Peace Palace (with a stone or rock contributed by every country in the world placed in this little sanctuary)...

And the Escher Museum, where I learned a lot about fascinating artist M.C. Escher...for starters, that he was Dutch! Who knew?!? This is why I love traveling, folks. Gotta beat the ignorance out of me somehow.