Thursday, tour and dinner

Thursday we were invited to spend the evening with the group from Monsanto again. We were told to meet in GroenPlaatz at 6pm for a tour of the city. I wasn't sure exactly how long the bus would take so I ended up down there about 5:45 so I had plenty of time to grab some friites and sit and people watch until Kyle and the rest of the group showed up.

Friites (french fries) are a national obsession here. There are Friite stands on every corner. They are served mostly with mayonnaise or curry ketchup. I've only had them with mayo. It's kinda funny that even in the nicest, fanciest places they serve fries with their meals.

So I met the group next to the Cathedral. We went on a walking tour throughout the city for about 2 hours. It turns out the city Antwerp means Thrown Hand. There is a legend that there was some large creature that live in the river and would require all ships that pass by to pay a large toll. If they couldn't pay the toll the creature would chop off one of their hands as payment for using his river. Then someone named Brabo came along and instead of paying the toll or losing a hand he chopped off the creatures hand and threw it into the river. Brabo is very popular here (many parking garages are called Brabo's). The fountain in the photo above is a sculpture of Brabo. You can see Brabo holding a hand above his head and the water squirting out is supposed to represent the blood. Beautiful, romantic twisted Europeans.

We walked though much of the old centre of Antwerp. We found out the reason there are so many religious scultpures on the street corners. It turns out that Antwerp used to be a city similar to Amsterdam or Venice, that there were canals running in the middle of the streets. The citizens wanted to put in street lights to be able to see the canals after dark so they wouldn't fall in and drown. If you put in a neighborhood street lamp you had to pay a very very high yearly tax in order to have your street light. If you put in a religious statue (normally Virgin Mary and baby Jesus) the city would give you a light for free. There are still around 75 statues on corners throughout the city. There is only one that has been restored to it's original painted colors. All of the rest of them are white or very pale.

We then went to the oldest restaurant in Antwerp. It's only been in business for 250 years!!! The other thing that Belgium is known for, in addition to Friites and Waffles are their mussels. Since we were in the 250 year old Rodden Hoed Restaurant that serves traditional Belgian food, I had to get the mussels. I chose the curry flavor of mussels. I first thought it was kind of odd that so many traditional Belgian places serve curried items. The fact is that Antwerp has been a major shipping port for hundreds of years. Most of the spices traded throughout the world came through Antwerp. Curry was one of the most expensive spices so they kept some of it for themselves and they use it in many dishes. It's a very very mild curry flavor, quite unlike Indian style curry.


Kyle went with another Belgian delicacy, eel. It was served the traditional Belgian way, in some green herb sauce. I was in happy little mussel land and I didn't feel like trying his weird green eel dish. We, of course, had big bowls of friites served next to our entrees.

Yes, the mussels are served in a large bucket. It's really strange to see your dinner come out and served to you in by the bucket full.

I was sitting next to the local wine expert and he was ordering lots of great bottles of wine. He has some amazing taste in wine. At home, I like an occassional glass of red wine but that's about it. Here, I'm becoming addicted to the wine. Not only is the food absolutely amazing, the wine is exceptional. In Belgium they drink mostly French wines. I've tasted the beer a few times but I'm really not a beer kinda gal. I do however, love me some wine now.