Brief but beautiful — Antwerp, Belgium
What I did
We only spent a few hours in Antwerp, but they were beautiful. Our interrailing tickets allow us to make as many trips as we like, as long as the trips are on specified days; this means that on days when we travel to a new destination, we're trying to fit in another city along the way. Antwerp was the chosen target to hit between Amsterdam and Brussels (actually, one of the most surprising discoveries of our trip so far is just how little time it takes by train to travel between places- Amsterdam and Brussels are a mere two hours apart).
Anyway, still feeling the effects of our last night/morning in Amsterdam, we bowled around the classic sightseeing spots with as much efficiency as we could muster in our hazy state. That perhaps explains why Antwerp seemed particularly pretty to us, however I think its traditional yet quirky charm goes beyond that. The architecture (which neither of us really have the faintest clue about, but like to pretend we do) was stunning: all huge, square buildings of grey stone, often adorned with unexpected objects on the top (my favourite was one that can only be described as a giant golden onion). This spawned a running joke where Tom imagines pontificating at some posh dinner party “Oh, so you're interested in architecture? And you haven't been to Antwerp?! Good God, well, you simply must go!”
Notable tourist attractions: there's a very pleasant bridge over a vast river, the town hall, and one of the gatehouses of 13th century Steen Castle (complete with a statue originally designed to be of people admiring an extremely large man's penis, which had hilariously been defaced by
17th century Jesuits who found it too obscene, and has been penis-less ever since).
In our continuing quest for the best vegan eateries for backpackers in Central Europe, we visited the Lombardia Cafe; unfortunately, this place would definitely not be high on the list. Although our healthy Mexican burgers (basically just falafel in a burger bun) were nice enough and we managed to get some of our favourite Whole Earth drinks, everything was massively overpriced, the service verging on rude and the cafe seemed pretentiously obsessed with celebrities (they had several walls with photos of their famous visitors, with Moby taking pride of place and then being mentioned in the menu more than once).
Overall, though, Antwerp was well worth stopping off in for a few hours!
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