Antwerpen

Posted: February 18th, 2007 | Author: saldarji | Filed under: travel | No Comments »

I’ve spent the last two nights in Paris, and I’m a bit behind on the blog entries. However, I will try to catch up by Wednesday.

Antwerp rules. Tracey and I stayed in an interesting B&B on the eastern edge of town. Hotel rooms are in short supply, so the B&B industry is booming. The city is a hub for fashion – one of the other guests worked as a rep for an Italian fashion house.

Once again, they have a Grote Markt in the middle of the city. The train station is located a bit east of the center of town. The museums, fashion school, arts, entertainment, etc. is located south of the city.

Unfortunately, it was raining for our two days in Antwerp. There is still a lot to do, and there is a ton of great restaurants. Everyone spoke English, and we met a lot of interesting people. We ran into an actor on the train who was telling us about his travels overseas. Everyone seemed to be involved with either the arts or culture in some way.

The public transportation was interesting. They never really checked for our tickets, and noone seemed to pay their fare unless inspectors boarded the train. The inspectors didn’t even check tickets.

Of course, everyone biked everywhere. Some of the streets have bicycle lanes on the sidewalk, which makes it tough to walk because you have to watch for bicycles, cars, trains, and humans.

We noticed that near the center of town there was a ton of pita/shwarma places. We were wondering why that was, so we decided to eat at one. Their shwarmas are made with fried gyro meat and served with frites. It turns out that the Belgians are crazy about pitas, and they eat it late at night after the clubs close, along with some beer.

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