Monday-Antwerp

Monday I decided to go out on my own and see the city. I've decided I like the old city center much much more than the modern Centraal Station area. The Centraal Station is where all the diamond shops, high end designer boutiques and touristy things are. The Groen Plaatz is the old city center with the old cobblestone roads, the old churches and just cooler scenery.

I headed down to Groen Plaatz and started walking. My original goal was to go down to the river front. When we were on our tour last week we could see the old fortress (castle) by the river but we didn't walk down to it. I started walking and of course, didn't find it. I did stumble upon an amazing old church though.

The outside of the church was nothing really special but I decided to go inside anyway. I walked in and immediately felt my eyes fill with tears. It was one of the most beautiful things that I've ever seen in my life. It is a baroque style of church which means it's heavily decorated in ornate statuary and wood carvings everywhere. Walking through this church I couldn't help but marvel at how many people must have spent their entire lives carving the pieces in this church. Even as I was photographing it I knew that there was no way possible that I could really capture the essence of the grandeur of this church.

There is a large carved pulpit on the side of the church. The preist would walk up the side and could preach his sermon from the middle of the pulpit. On the bottom of the pulpit there are life size wooden sculptures of Jesus and 2 of the desciples catching fish. They are standing in a boat and there is a carved net and several fish caught in the net. There are wooden leaves growing out of it everywhere. It really is one of the most spectacular things I've ever seen in my life.

I walked all over the place and then headed back to the hotel to meet up with Kyle. We headed back down to the GroenPlaatz and walked around some more. We headed down to the river front to see the old castle that is on the banks. Kyle was doing the navigating and we walked forever completely parallel to the river. I don't want to hear again how it's just me and my bad sense of direction.



The castle itself was closed for the night but you could still walk around the outside of it. Kyle, of course, knew much more about castle fortification than I did. He was pointing out all the little holes where they would have had archers shooting at people trying to get into the fortress. It's so strange to think that all those things you grew up seeing in movies and reading in fairy tales really happened. Because Antwerp has been such an international port for hundreds and hundreds of years it was a very desirable port to try to overtake.

After walking around down by the river for a while we headed back up near the GroenPlaatz and had dinner at a fabulous French restaurant right across from the Cathedral. The Cathedral was absolutely amazing in the sunset lighting.


At the French restaurant the entire menu was in Dutch and the waiter had to help us to order everything. Kyle picked out the starter on his own though. He ordered Kip Formage Foccacia which he though was going to be a type of bread with some cheese and chicken on it. (kip means chicken, formage is cheese) The waiter looked at him a bit strange when he said he wanted it as a starter but went ahead with it. We about died laughing when he brought our our appitizer and it turned out to be a grilled chicken breast SANDWICH!!! I've been giving Kyle a very hard time about being such a fatty he needs a sandwich before he can start his meal.

I had probably the best steak of my entire life. Kyle had some sort of curry pasta that was really good from the bite I stole. We then walked over and had some gelato before catching the bus back to our hotel.