Antwerp

Day 1
Our journey was now taking us to our final Belgian city – Antwerp.

A 90km trip along a semi-highway dotted by traffic lights later we arrived at Camping DeMolen on the Linkerover (left bank of the river) and checked in for a bargain 8€ per night!

Wooden escalators leading down, down, down...



The tunnel under the river

 After lunch we headed on foot towards the city. Access from this side of the river was via the Saint Anna Tunnel – a 570m long tunnel under the river Scheldt dug in the 1930’s. To access the tunnel (which was free) walkers and cyclists descend 31m underground either via lift or via giant wooden escalators. It was a fantastic sight in itself. The tunnel popped us up right near the Grote Markt – similar to that in Brussels surrounded on all 4 sides by grand guild halls. Quite a sight to behold even thought the weather was miserable.

We wandered further into the city in order to find a waffle – it was waffle day again. And had 2 from Desire Lille with whipped cream, strawberries, banana and not quite enough chocolate for our liking.

Afterwards we made our way back to the campground in the wild wind to cook some dinner (difficult when the gas burner keeps being blown out) and some Grimbergen beers.

Day 2

Our last day in Belgium and it was wet and windy not much fun AT ALL.

We waited for a break in the weather and walked once again via the St Anna Tunnel into the city centre.

Grote Markt

Antwerp Train Station

It was quite difficult to keep ourselves entertained and dry in the weather as it times it was so windy that you were getting wet from every direction so we made our way to the Grand Bazar (a 3 level shopping centre) which before i could get too excited we sadly found was under renovations so lots of shops were closed and hard to access. It was kind of a weird little place anyway.

What we did find was a nice little sandwich store where we tried a roll filled with smos (when asked we were told this was a “combination of wegdables”) and chicken – quite tasty and only 3€50 for both serves.

We had decided that summer was looking more and more over and that i would need closed in shoes suitable for walking (still recovering from blisters from ballet flats in Brussels) and so we went shoe shopping down the National Staat – main shopping street of Antwerp. This street also has the Momu Fashion museum (Dave wouldn’t agree to go to it L) as Antwerp is considered a bit of a fashion savvy place.

Shoe shopping in Antwerp (ps didnt get these leopard print beauties)

With mission accomplished we arrived at the central train station – very impressive for a transit centre we thought.

We headed back towards the city’s main cathedral (Onze Lieve Vrouwkathedral) which provided some relief from the wind and rain and housed paintings from Peter Paul Rubins – northern Europes famous Baroque artist.

Nearby in the Groen Platz (another town square) we soaked up some time in one of the cafes sipping hot chocolates – perfect for the weather although we had to put up with copious amounts of cigarette smokers.

Braving the rain for a pic

By this time it was 5:30pm and time to look for an early dinner. We were rewarded with great food at De 7 Shaken, Dave having yet another Flemish Stew this time beef and I had chicken and pesto pasta. To wash it down we added another 2 beers of Belgium to the collection – Krystal and Le Chouffe.

Cheers toBelgian beers

Oh no, all i have for dinner is a few lousy pieces of meat

Oh...its ok some Belgian Frits and a whole massive pot of stew (not in the pic)

Once we walked back in the rain to the camp ground we found Don and Sandy (Aussies from Brugges) had arrived too. We had a short catchup at the washup area before heading back to the dry van.