Antwerpen

It was still dark when I awoke around 0630. Time to start travelling in Europe. It was a rainy morning, though it cleared up later. I had no problems getting a seat on the train to Den Haag. The Thalys was a skinny, fast but crowded train. The luggage racks had been cordoned off with tape due to the Madrid bombings less than a month previously. So I sat with my backpack next to my legs in a cramped seat.

My destination for the evening was Gent, where I would be sleeping at the flat of my niece's boyfriend, but I was taking a stopover in Antwerpen so that I wouldn't arrive during the day when he would be working. It was raining when I arrived at Berchem station. I caught the bus to Astridplein with the Park Plaza hotel a spash of bright colour on a drippy day. The tram (which they called a pre-metro) was slow due to construction.

From there I walked down the Meir to Groenplaats. There was a cutting wind. The streets here are lined with old architecture. Few of the restaurants were open so I settled for a snack of chips with garlic sauce at a friture shop.

This is a statue of Rubens in front of Onze-Lieve-Vrouwekathedraal (Our Lady's Cathedral).

The 16th century guildhouses at Grotemarkt.

The statue of Brabo with the giant's hand, which is one of the founding myths connected with the name of the city.

I wondered if this Australian Ice Cream shop had any connection at all with Australia. Probably just as much connection as a Belgian Waffles cafe in Australia has with Belgium. Too cold a day for ice cream though.

I thought this cafe's decor and wall attractive. As you can see, the sun had also come out.

This is Het Steen (The Stone), what remains of Antwerpen's old fortifications, just next to the River Scheldt.

The border with The Netherlands is not far from here. In fact the mouth of the Scheldt is in Dutch territory.

I rode the trams to pass some time and also to get out of the cold. Then I had some waffles at Désiré de Lille. It had a pretty tearoom.

The tables outside were deserted, that's how cold it was.


The shops here had attractive fashion in the windows.

A horse drawn tourist wagon.

A view of Antwerpen Centraal from the entrance of Chinatown, which was rather small and grotty. I tried unsuccessfully to find a pita shop for dinner and decided to forget about it.


At the station I found that a train to Berchem that I wanted had been cancelled. I took another connecting train. Fortunately, the Gent train was still waiting. But that was slow. At St. Niklaas they said that there was a problem with the engine so all the passengers changed to a faster train to Kortrijk. Amazing the delays for what must have been a distance of only 50 or 60 km by rail.


I finally arrived in Gent around 2040. I looked around for P, my niece's boyfriend. Eventually a woman who turned out to be P's mother came up and asked me if I was the person P was expecting (they didn't know what I looked like). It turned out that he was away for work reasons elsewhere in Belgium that night and had asked his mother to let me into his flat. As I had arrived late she was in a hurry to catch a late train back to her hometown so she took me to a nearby bar and left me in the care of a female bartender who drew me a map of how to reach the flat, which was walking distance from the station. No problems finding it really. I had settled in when the phone rang. It was the mother, checking that I was ok. I showered, and made myself comfortable on a mattress and lulled myself to sleep with some tasty jazz piano by Mark Isaacs.