Europe: Antwerp(en), Belgium (Jan 19 - Jan 20)

January 19th, 2013:

Belgium! We made it to the city of Antwerp (Antwerpen in Dutch).  It's interesting that they speak Dutch there, but a different type of Dutch. Apparently in northern Belgium, French is a lot more prevalent.

After finding a hotel that actually had rooms available, the first thing we wanted to do was find food. After getting on the wrong tram, getting on the right tram, and trekking through snow, we finally found a place.

Some architecture around the restaurant at night (City Hall):

Church:

Inside the restaurant:

In a previous post I talked about how my boss lost our parking stub from a parking garage... well when we were at this restaurant, he finally found it. We had a good laugh about that.

After dinner, we bundled up and headed out to find another disco type place. Here is Wesley being silly:

We settled on a karaoke bar close to the restaurant we ate it. A lot of the songs were popular American songs that people sang in English. Occasionally a Dutch song would come on and the people would go nuts.

My boss suggested that I get up there and sing a karaoke song since he heard about my shenanigans from the day before my birthday. After contemplating the idea in my head, and thumbing through the binder of songs, we laughed at the idea of me singing the song "Bitch" by Meredith Brooks. Everyone should know the song... "I'm a bitch, I'm a lover, I'm a child, I'm a mother..."

I thought against it and just enjoyed everyone else singing familiar songs as I sang comfortably from the crowd... until I broke down and asked this guy next to me who had already sang four songs to sing the song. The conversation went like this:

Kara: Hey! Do you speak English?
Dude: A litttle. I speak French. Hello!
Kara: Oh, I see. Can I request that you go up there and sing the song "Bitch".. you know the song.. I'm a bitch, I'm a lover, I'm a child...
Dude: Oh yeah, I know that song. I will sing it with you.
Kara: With me? No no no. You sing it!
Dude: No. I will sing it with you"
Kara: *hesitates* Okay, deal.

I scribbled out our names on piece of paper with the request. If I remember right, his name was Jacques. Within the next 20 minutes, we were up on stage belting out the lyrics. Wesley recorded a video, which I will not be sharing on here, but I took a couple of freeze frames from it to share with you. Unfortunately, I didn't learn my lesson from the last karaoke I sang, because I still did the occasional arm-in-the-air thing

It was a rush for me, to be in a foreign country, singing an American song with a guy that barely speaks English. Fun!

We didn't stay too much longer after that, and headed back to our hotel. Jamie was on-line again when I got back, so I felt it was necessary to send him another photo from 6 hours away to let him know I was thinking about him:

January 20th, 2013:

The next morning, we checked out of our hotel. This cute little boy was dragging his own luggage around that I had to take a photo:

We went to load up the car with our luggage before exploring the city during the day but when we got to the garage, my boss couldn't find the keys to the car.

 Wesley making it dramatic:

 We hadn't eaten breakfast yet, so we snacked on a few leftover Speculaas. (Thanks, Chris!)

Eventually our boss found the car keys still on the night stand in his room. It was a good thing he went back because he also left a lump sum of euros on the table as well.

We packed the car and then it was time to explore Antwerpen during the day. I think this day was the coldest day I experienced during my whole trip in Europe. I wish I had brought my umbrella out with me this day because it was constantly snowing on us.

One of the hotel receptionists recommended a place to us to eat for breakfast -- a place that served Belgium Waffles, so we headed in that direction. On the way I stopped for a couple of quick photo-ops.

After a couple of wrong turns, the delicious smell of waffles finally hit our noses and we knew that we had arrived. There were so many options to choose from, but I chose the waffle with powered sugar on top, with a side of apple baguette type things.

These waffles were flaky (not as doughy) and wonderful! I wish there were waffles like these in the USA.

The apple baguettes tasted like the apple fritters you can get from Peach Valley Cafe in Gainesville. They were so good that we ordered another plate full for the table.

After breakfast, we mustered up the courage to go back out into the pouring snow and continue to walk around and check the place out.

 Wesley made the joke that we got a discount if we ate outside:

Inside the large church:

 Very cool doors inside the church:

The restaurant we ate at the night before, where we also stopped to grab some hot teas. The waitress mentioned in conversation that it is illegal to have a snowball fight in Antwerpen. You could potentially be fined up to 90 euros. I'm glad she told us because not too much earlier in the day, we did have a mini snowball fight. I still don't know why this law is in place.

We traveled to the edge of the city where a large river is, and this cool looking castle.

More photos by the river:

 I had to get one photo from this trip doing the gator chop.  Go Gators!

We then headed north to find another museum:

This kid had the right idea for transportation, being drug on a sleigh:

Finally we made it to the Museum aan de Stroom:

It only cost me 1 Euro to get in (Everyone else ~6 Euro) because I am under the age of 26. This museum also let us take photos inside.

Each floor had a different themed exhibit. It was cool, but we were exhausted around this point:

The windows were great because we could take photos of the city from high above:

After the museum, we headed back to where the car was, making sure to stop at the train station there because we heard about the beautiful architecture inside. I'm so glad we did because it was absolutely amazing. It's another occurrence where the pictures just don't do it justice:

 

We grabbed some grub and then hit the road back to Eindhoven, NL.