Carlton Hotel Antwerpen

Every two years, the weather man declared, there are strong gales in the south of England, the type that disrupt train services, housewives lose their laundry drying on the line, umbrellas get blown inside out - and even trees are blown down. This was the day that we chose to fly to England. It's OK, the gales will die down sometime in the afternoon, said the same weather man, but not after we've flown over to ...

... in-a-lifetime experience'.<br><br>Zoals jullie wellicht weten, leggen we de volledige afstand per openbaar vervoer af. Enkel voor de terugreis zullen we beroep doen op een vliegtuig. We hopen hierdoor een geleidelijkere overgang te maken tussen de verschillende culturen en een vollediger beeld te bekomen van het leven langsheen de moderne levensaders van de wereld. Zo passeren we langs enkele van 's werelds meest desolate plekken, maar ook vervoegen we de massa in ...

We arrived in Antwerp, Belgium today early around 4 am. Antwerp is located in what is known as Flanders, in the northern part of Belgium. It is a fairly large city, around 500,000 inhabitants and is the second largest city in the country. We are on the River Scheldt, which provides access to the Port of Antwerp, which is Europe's 2nd largest port. This morning we went on a walking tour of Antwerp. Antwerp's Grote Markt is a tribute to ...

Brussels Beer Weekend Every year, on the first weekend in September, there is a beer paradise weekend in Brussels, Belgium. We went the first year we were here (see Sept 29, 2003 entry) and repeated it again this year. Of course the beer weekend is more fun with friends so we invited a few. Tom and Meeghan, who we know through our friends that went with us the first year, Stephan and Julie, drove down from Amsterdam and ...

A lovely holiday started with a terrible experience because of the transportation. We have chosen Eurolines form Antwerp to Paris, just because of the prize (around EUR 60 for a round trip), but it turned into a very exhausting adventure. After more than tree hours of drive, we were still in Belgium. Around 1PM we arrived in Paris.

So today was my first day at the rowing club, lets just say these rowers are not the most punctual bunch, but once they get there and get rowing they go FULL TILT! Living in Brussels and the rowing club being in a city north of Brussels, it is quite the hike getting there. In total, one-way, I must walk, take one tram, one metro (subway), one train, one bus, then walk some more to finally arrive there 1hr 30 minutes later. Needless to say it is harder to get ...

... is the word I'm looking for. I think that I prefer the smaller, more discreet churches that allow you to focus on the task at hand - praising god - than the decorated to the max churches that make you ooh and ahh at the architecture. But I'm sure priorities and thoughts were much different centuries ago when everyone was trying to outdo one another with the biggest and the best. I'm realizing that I've started a book here, so I'll try to post some pictures with this entry, and say aurevior for now!

... was in English with Flemmish AND French subtitles (gotta cater for both languages here) except for the bits where the actors spoke in French, then it only had Flemmish subtitles. Considering the movie is mainly set in France there was quite a bit of French so I probably didn't completely understand about 20% of the movie but I remembered a lot from the book so it mostly made sense. But I'm reserving judgement until I get to see it again with English subtitles on all the French bits.

I arrived into Brussells, rather late, I think it was about midnight and I took a taxi from the airport to the hostel that I had booked for the night, only to arrive there and find that they had absolutely no record of my booking at all. And as I didnt have any access to my emails there was no way of proving to them that I had made a booking. But thankfully they did have a couple of beds avaliable and I was able to crash out in a room of about 30 ...

... joined us. Oh wait, not yet. First he had to check out some of the wares that were being sold at the market. Chris is a collector of rare military timepieces so he saw a man who was selling compasses. The man saw that Chris was eyeing a compass so he approached Chris by saying "Stanley of London" (apparently a really nice piece), to which Chris said "Stanley of India". The man knew that Chris was no dummie and could spot a cheap fake so he left him alone. Pretty funny. Anyways ...