HaveBeen: Antwerp - Belgium



It has been a while since I have been to Antwerp. I pass the city every once in a while, but I just change trains there and then leave again. So I don't get to see anything. But his time I did! I went with my friend for a full day of sight seeing and just strolling around the city.

 

 

 

I like the train station of Antwerp a lot. The entrance hall is very beautiful. And the cool thing is that there was an amazing flashmob done in that hall once: 



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQLCZOG202k

 

 

 

 Close to the train station is a diamond quarter which is quite famous according to the Lonely Planet. But since diamonds are not quite within our budget, we skipped that part. There is also a zoo close to the train station, which is probably nice. But surely not on a gloomy and rainy day like this. So it was also a no for the zoo. Instead we went on with our mission to explore the centre part of the city.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There was this cool chocolate shop where you were allowed to go to the kitchen and watch the chocolate be made. They even had a chocolate dress!

 

 

Of course there was also the onze-lieve-vrouwekathedraal, quite a landmark since you can see it from everywhere in the city.

 

 

 We also saw the Brabofontein. It was switched off (apparently it quite often is), but it was still cool to see this statue, that tells the tory of how the city got its name. The story goes like this: There was a giant named Druon Antigoon who chopped of the hands of the people who did not pay their bills and after that threw the hands in the river. Brado took revenge by chopping of the hand of the giant, throwing it in the river as well. So that was how the city was named Antwerpen, coming from hand werpen (= throwing a hand).

 

The statue is actually positioned in the wrong direction since the hand is not aimed at the river now. This is because the town hall is in the direction of the river and if the statue would be placed that way, it would seem liked the hand was being aimed at the town hall.

 

 

 

 In Antwerpen there was a bunch of Christmas decorations, like in most places around this time of the year. Although they did seem a lot less into it then some of the other cities I have been to recently. And I did not quite get the elephant decorations to be honest.

 

 

 

 

 

We decided to explore the city a bit more and choose a destination that sounded nice from the city map and go there. We choose "Het Eilandje" (=the little island). Wrong decision. There was nothing touristic to see at all. Just streets full of rather gloomy looking houses. But we kept hoping to find something nicer a bit further on, so we kept walking. But no such luck. The nicest thing we saw in a walk of more than 30 minutes was this little bright blue house.

 

 

So we turned around and went back to the touristic part of the city again. No more adventurous exploring that day.

 

 

I think I have to go back to Antwerp another time to really see the city. This day it was rainy, dark en gloomy and there were tons of people doing very last-minute Christmas shopping. Not the best circumstances. I should also better prepare myself better, so I know which parts of the city are worth a visit and which are not. Just going with the flow does not always works best. But we had fun nevertheless.

 

HaveBeen: The Hague - the Netherlands

I think it has been around 8 years since I have last been to the Hague. To be honest, I did not remember anything of the city, except for eating some really nice tapas. And that we were searching for the parliament inside the parliament properties. And caught that moment of dumbness on camera. The good old times.

 

 

 

This time I went to The Hague with a friend from Luxembourg. We went there just before Christmas so the crowds in the centre part of the city were really crazy with last minute Christmas shoppers. It was quite a nightmare to walk through the shopping streets, so we avoided those for most of the time. A good choice, because we got to see some pretty parts of the city:



 

 

 

 

 

 And this time, we found the parliament (Het Binnenhof) really easily, just by following the signs that are everywhere and are pointing out all the main attractions of the city. Really useful. And I must say that the parliament was actually nicer than I remembered. It's a shame the weather was so gloomy. I am sure you could take some awesome pictures here on a sunny day.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The parliament was just a short visit, since you cannot go inside (at least, as far as we could see). So we decided to randomly follow some of the signs that pointed to nice-sounding attractions. And we found some great places! Also, my friend ate herring for the first time. And she liked it too.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For lunch we had to concur the crowds and head into the city centre a bit. We sat on a very nice heated and covered terrace in the middle of the centre. The food was amazing and the view was nice. Just one problem; the wind. It was so strong that I was afraid the entire cover of the terrace could just be blown off any minute. Not good for my nerves.

 

When walking through the shopping streets I noticed that some of the shops and malls are located in really wonderful buildings.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The crowdedness made us decide to have dinner in another city, because the amount of people just seemed to increase more and more when it got later (remind me to avoid cities completely in the week of Christmas next year). Luckily we found this cute little place to have a coffee before leaving. It looked like a small artist studio on the inside.

 

 

 

 

All in all, I really liked the city. A lot more than I remembered even. You can definitely see everything in one day and maybe even combine it with Rotterdam or Scheveningen (both are very close).