Antwerp

In the 3-day weekend that has just passed (for Pentecost; I had to Google was the hell that even was. All I know is it's our last public holiday til Christmas), O and I went on a little trip down to Antwerp. I'd been briefly before when my mom visited last fall, but we only went for a day, and we didn't see much because the weather sucked and my mom can't walk very much. So I made a mental note to come back in the spring, when there was better weather, with O, and see more of the city. I chose last weekend more for the freebie 3rd day off than the weather, which was forecast to be cloudy and wet. But in the end there was quite a bit of sun, so it made for a nice weekend away.

To be honest, we kinda were grasping for things to do to fill 3 days, and in the end we came back earlier than expected on Monday. But that was also due to our laziness and unwillingness to do things that involved a lot of walking (the zoo, Middelheim Open Air Museum), and our expectation that the weather was going to be crap. Sunday morning was cloudy and cold, so we aimed to do something indoors. We thought the aquarium would be fun and headed over there only to find that it was closed for renovations for 2 months. Gah. So we saw a movie, which I feel lame doing on vacation, but we really didn't know what else to do. We saw Layer Cake, which was pretty good and I was pretty proud of staying awake through the whole thing because I felt really sleepy when we got there. And then we came out of the theater and... sun! There was this lovely blue sky and it suddenly felt like spring. So we had a nice lunch outside amongst some leafy trees and later some sangria at a tapas place. Mmm...

Actually we ended up eating outside quite often. Even on Saturday night, when we were the only ones on the entire street stupid enough to sit at a table outside. But we hardly cared because we had such yummy, yummy food that night. We ate at a place called Lollapalooza on the Pelgrimsstraat, which was quiet and full of nice little restaurants. We both had one of Lollapalooza's wok dishes, a big plate of stirfried veggies and meat served with a side of fragrant rice that on its own made your mouth water. I left with a very happy tummy.

In a similar vein, on Monday, for lunch, we ate at Wok to Walk, which apparently has a branch in Amsterdam as well. You get a big takeout container filled with noodles or rice and whatever veggies, meat and sauce you want for about 8 euros. Heel lekker. We sat on their terrace, which was on a big square, listened to the interesting music of the Hungarian (?) group that was playing nearby, and enjoyed the sun that was warmer than it'd been so far. We just sat for awhile, enjoying some time of not needing to be anywhere else.

On Monday we also went to the Fotomuseum which was smaller than FOAM, but quite nice. They had a really interesting section that showed a history of photography, with lots of old cameras and photos. Then I loved the exhibit they had of crime scene photos from 1930s and 1940s Antwerp. I found those fascinating. First there was the whole LA Confidential 30s and 40s feel of it; the decor in the houses, the cars, men wearing suits and hats, all in black and white. Then there was the fact that you were looking at these real crime scenes and real blood and occasionally real dead bodies. Some photos were of reenactments to help the police figure out if the crime could have worked the way they were thinking it worked. The best of these was one of a woman, standing in a bedroom in which the bed had blood-soaked sheets, holding a big axe as if she were about to attack someone, heh. Fun job. I looked for any postcards from this exhibit in the museum shop, but, like FOAM, they didn't have much for sale that had to do with their current exhibits.

When I visited Antwerp with my mom, we went through one street on a horse carriage ride and I wanted to jump off and have a look, but instead I left it as one reason I wanted to come back for a visit. It was just full of all these hip-looking clothes and record shops, a whole street full of places I wanted to check out. So we found the street (Kammenstraat; bless the tourist office girl who knew immediately what street I was trying to find once I'd realized that I'd forgotten the name of it) and we promptly spent at least an hour in a shop called Fish and Chips that was full of retro and skater-y clothes, shoes and toys. A bit expensive, but O bought a nice pair of pants, and I found a cute t-shirt that I love, plus it was cheaper than most of their tees. In their big shop windows, they had a graveyard-themed display with headless mannequins in caskets and painted tombstones. One casket had a woman in a wedding dress in it, but it turned out to be a real woman. I had thought the hands looked a bit life-like as we walked closer, and my suspicion was confirmed when I could see her take a deep breath. I thought she was doing the whole lying still and then sitting up suddenly and freaking people out thing, but she didn't really seem to care about playing dead. Besides noticably taking breaths, she once totally shifted around and looked into the store. When we were on our way out we were watching her again and she opened her eyes and gave O a menacing look before breaking into a smile.

One other memorable story about the trip was having a guy on his stag night come up to me in a bar we were at and asking if I could give him a tampon or pad. I was probably more embarrassed by the whole thing than he was. I couldn't understand his Belgian accent though, especially in a loud bar, so it was kind of weird for this guy to come over, talk to me all "blah blah blahblah, blah" and then he held out in his hand a tampon that he'd already collected. I was a little confused and weirded out, to say the least. I wonder what the poor guy had to do with the things.

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Mostly due to finding some great restaurants on our recent trips to Barcelona and Antwerp, I've set up a Virtual Tourist page so that I can gather my recommendations in one place. I've only just started it last night, and I have no places up yet, but when I have it a bit more set up I'll add a link to the sidebar.