Saturday, October 22, 2011

Day Trip to Antwerpen Belgium

It was a nice sunny day so I decided to drive - and the destination was Antwerpen in Belgium, which is just about 100 miles away (south) and it took just about 100 minutes.
The first thing I visited was this castle... I don't know the history well, but it seems it was occupied by Roman at some point and there are many status of showing how big these people were.
This is the main reason I came down all the way here today - the church where main characters in the animation in Japan died, which I don't quite remember. I think this is a beautiful church but it seems only Japanese know about the story.
This is the inside of the church. There were many famous paintings, and one of which was the one the characters saw at the end of the story - sorry no picture as I did not go inside of the church.
Next to the church, there is the city hall, which has obviously Belgium's flag along with EU's one. It gives you more European feeling than Amsterdam/Haarlem at least for me.
In front of the city hall, there is a famous water fountain. If you look at closely you can see the water is actually coming from some of the body parts, e.g. from the wrist at the top.
After some sightseeing, I was ready for good food, which was actually the main reason why I came to Belgium. It is konwn that Belgium is famous for food, while the Netherlands is famous for not-good food. I did not do any research on the restaurants, but I found this nice French restaurants, Alaville, several blocks away from main attractions. Glass of red wine was nice with this chicken dish which came with a lot of root vegetables. It was so worth the trip down here.
On the way back when I was waiting for the traffic right to change, I noticed the red is not circle but HART shape. How cute this could be. I didn't see at any other places so I guess this was the only place?
I will come back to Antwerpen or at least to Belgium during my stay in the Netherlands, for food and chocolates. I bought 500g of high-end chocolate, which I asked at the information booth, and it costs only 10 euro... Really cheap.

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