Antwerp
I'm roughly halfway through a six-hour train journey, and it seems like a good idea to make maximum use of my internet access. As I'm on the way to one holiday, my thoughts turn to my previous one.
For the last four springs, my partner and I have taken a long weekend in the Low Countries. We like the convenience of Eurostar, especially considering that tickets to Brussels include a free journey to any Belgian town, in an attempt to spread the tourists around the country. If you go to the Flemish-speaking part of Belgium, everyone speaks good English, although this trip I managed to have one conversation in each of French and Flemish without the other person switching to English (for full disclosure, these were not long or complicated conversations).
Why Antwerp? In part, because we had already been to the more famous destinations, but our book on European city breaks also made it sound like our sort of place. It turned out to be a sizeable city, with an interesting history. If the focus was very much on the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, then that was hardly a reason for me to complain, especially once I found out that it was the home town of Rubens. We went to the painter's house, and balanced this insight into cultural history by visiting the other surviving seventeenth-century mansions, one of a prominent politician, and the other of a successful commercial family, which also contained their printing workshop. They invented italics!
There are of course numerous beautiful churches, but a contrast to the normal medieval and early modern sightseeing is provided by a brand new museum, opened only in 2010, I think. This felt a bit like the Museum of London, with its interest in world history through the prism of Antwerp's contribution. But it added in some interesting exhibitions, including one describing the attitude of a wide range of belief systems to the afterlife. The entry to this exhibition had been made into a pitch black tunnel, an example of the innovative use of space throughout the museum.
The weather wasn't brilliant, the hotel was perhaps a little expensive, and it took us a while to find a decent restaurant the night we wanted a nice meal (though in the end we were very pleased with both food and service in the place we chose). But the people of Antwerp are rightly proud of their home, even if they might go a bit overboard in celebrating the hand-throwing giant who is supposed to give the city its name.
For the last four springs, my partner and I have taken a long weekend in the Low Countries. We like the convenience of Eurostar, especially considering that tickets to Brussels include a free journey to any Belgian town, in an attempt to spread the tourists around the country. If you go to the Flemish-speaking part of Belgium, everyone speaks good English, although this trip I managed to have one conversation in each of French and Flemish without the other person switching to English (for full disclosure, these were not long or complicated conversations).
Why Antwerp? In part, because we had already been to the more famous destinations, but our book on European city breaks also made it sound like our sort of place. It turned out to be a sizeable city, with an interesting history. If the focus was very much on the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, then that was hardly a reason for me to complain, especially once I found out that it was the home town of Rubens. We went to the painter's house, and balanced this insight into cultural history by visiting the other surviving seventeenth-century mansions, one of a prominent politician, and the other of a successful commercial family, which also contained their printing workshop. They invented italics!
There are of course numerous beautiful churches, but a contrast to the normal medieval and early modern sightseeing is provided by a brand new museum, opened only in 2010, I think. This felt a bit like the Museum of London, with its interest in world history through the prism of Antwerp's contribution. But it added in some interesting exhibitions, including one describing the attitude of a wide range of belief systems to the afterlife. The entry to this exhibition had been made into a pitch black tunnel, an example of the innovative use of space throughout the museum.
The weather wasn't brilliant, the hotel was perhaps a little expensive, and it took us a while to find a decent restaurant the night we wanted a nice meal (though in the end we were very pleased with both food and service in the place we chose). But the people of Antwerp are rightly proud of their home, even if they might go a bit overboard in celebrating the hand-throwing giant who is supposed to give the city its name.