On Tuesday night Kyle and I took the #17 bus and went down to the Central Station, the main train station area. It also happens to be the fashion and shopping area of the city. All shops close down at 5pm here. They stay open late on Thursday night until 9pm but every other night they all just close up and go home at 5. Strange. So we walked around that area for a long time. I found some really great pieces in some windows but for some reason Kyle told me I wasn't allowed to buy any of them. There was a really great Chanel dress in the window of a store that was only $4395 Euro's. (only $6916 US).
We had dinner at a nice little Italian place. I know, Italian again. There are Italian restaurants on every corner. I'm not sure exactly what Belgian food is since all we are finding in all the areas are foods of different nationalities.
After dinner we found another gelato place (have I mentioned I'm in love with gelato?!?) and this gelato place also had waffles. Belgium is supposed to be famous for their waffles but all the waffle shops close at 5pm so we haven't had them yet. The waffle was sweeter than the ones we are used to in the states and the outside of it had a little bit of caramelized sugar on it. The outside of the waffle was super crispy and the inside was nice and soft and chewy. It was one of the best desserts I've ever had. The fact that it gets dark so late takes some major getting used to. We were walking around and Kyle happened to look at his watch and it was 10:30. It felt (and looked outside) like it was about 7:30.
Yesterday I ventured out on my own and did a little window shopping and hit a grocery store and picked up some lunch. There was an "excursion" planned with the group from Monsanto and they sent a taxi to pick up me and the boyfriend of another engineer. The limo picked us up at the hotel at 4:30 and we headed over to Monsanto. Traffic was light so we ended up getting there early enough to have a chance to drive through a small village of Lillo. The entire town was about 50 buildings. There were 2 roads with a small round-a-bout in the middle of the town. We stopped at the river and I took a couple of photos of the new Antwerp harbour they are building and will be opening in 2 years. I also got a shot of a Nuclear power plant that is next door to Monsanto as well. It's so strange to see nuclear power plants everywhere. I was talking to the taxi driver and he was surprised that the US uses oil and coal for power. He couldn't believe that we don't have windmills or nuclear power.
The only thing we knew about the excursion was that we were to wear shoes that we didn't mind getting dirty. We ended up doing something that was totally more our speed. We drove out to the country in Holland (which I learned is actually not a country of it's own but a part of The Netherlands) and we played Farmers Golf. We were broken up into teams of 4 (there were 16 of us) and given a ball and a mallet per team. Throughout this large field, with cows, a horse and a donkey grazing you hit the ball with the mallet (the mallet is a stick with a wooden shoe on the end) and try to get it into a bucket on the other side of the field. There were a total of 9 holes. We also had the added fun of trying to watch out for cow patties and horse poop. There was a small strip of "green" from one hole to the next but a great deal of it was "rough". I think our team ended up winning but we didn't keep super close track. It was a lot of fun though. The fields were bordered by small creeks. I kept mouthing Kyle telling him not to hit it into the creek. So of course, I smacked it right into the creek. Luckily Kyle and his freakishly long arms was able to get the ball with a little help from Tony. After a few beers we were taken to a nearby restaurant for dinner.
The restaurant was absolutely gorgeous. We had some amazing food (some of the best smoked salmon I've ever had in my life) and wine and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. We had a taxi back to Antwerp and got back here a little after 11pm last night. Notice how light the sky is in these photos of the restaurant. It was about 10:30 pm when I took these!!!
A few things I learned today:
People really and truly do wear wooden shoes. A couple of the guys who work at Monsanto brought their wooden shoes to wear during the game. We bought a pair for Benjamin and Morgan. I keep joking that I'm going to wear them everywhere I go from now on.
People here don't think twice about riding their bicycles very long distances, even in winter. There are many people at the plant that live over 20 miles from work and ride their bikes!!! One of the men we rode with last night was telling us that if he rides his bike to work it takes him about an hour and a half each way to ride his bike. I can't even imagine anyone at home riding a bike that far. I tried to convince Kyle that he should start riding his bike to work but we decided that riding a bike through Cahokia and Sauget probably wouldn't be that great of an idea.
Old versus new here is a much different concept than at home. We were talking to another guy here about the rest of our trip. We mentioned going to Germany/Austria to see castles. He said, "Oh, the modern castles." The castles we are going to see were built in the 1700's!!!! They consider them the "modern" castles.
Tonight we are going on a walking tour of downtown Antwerp.
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