Hotel Postiljon Antwerp

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 ...

... to the office of Michel's Israeli acquaintance, and saw diamonds that would be worth even more than the 1 we were previously shown. And all different colours too - including gold, pink and blue. There's a mad 3D scanner we were shown that scans a diamond and works out the best way for it to be cut, and then values it according to clarity, carats, colour, size, etc. It's all done extremely professionally.<br><br><br><br><br><br> Dinner ...

... the lovely little place in the hotel. Tomato soup, dutch steak with red wine sauce, and appale crepe with vanilla ice cream for dessert. And a Heinekin. I was told it would be sacreligious to order any other type of beer in Amsterdam. Then I went upstairs and washed my socks and undies in the sink and went to bed. Plan for the 6th: Museum-o-rama. And find the red light district. Who am I to rebel against years of tourists gawking at prostitues? :)

We decided to take a trip to the Flemish city of Antwerp and escape the French for a day. It's still hard to get used to the fact that just outside Brussels you feel like you are in a different country, which in a sense you are...Which is why we still don't have a government. Met the ...

... I do, I do ! Mr. and Mrs. Uebber, driving off. To the church. Coming out of the beautiful church, under a sky of flowers. Do not worry, security is keeping an eye on them! Sooooooooooooooooooo pretty, my little Springmuis. I am a married man! The family posing in front of the palace. Which palace? Have a look: http://www.huisvandijck.be/en/index.htm click on 'EN ...

As a last minute idea, we decided to take a few days off that we had and make a trip to Brussels, home of really good chocolate and a cool Christmas Market. Today we spent most of our time just walking around town, seeing all the sights and taking in the stalls that make up the 2 kilometers of christmas market. Mostly junk, some things you might think about and the rest is food and ...

... the players'. Sheer delight when Timmy Cahill rammed home the second goal, icing on the cake from Aloisi. In Andrew's opinion, the greatest moment in the history of the world...ever. Found out our van was ready, so jumped back in the borrowed van and headed for Utrecht. Took about 1h30m to get out of Brussels [geez we hate that place], and eventually got back to Utrecht quite late. Spent the night in our new van in the driveway of the campervan guys.

Hello everyone! Okay, so Belgium is great. It is just as I would have pictured it. There are small little streets, with the nicest people you have ever met and chocolate stores around every corner. We got there late Tuesday night and there were already people on the dock waving. Unfortunately customs was closed (or so they told us) so we couldn't get off the ship until the next morning. We pretty much just spent the first day walking around town. I had an amazing ...

... some for us, so all is good. Afterwards we try for another go at it, but the lines are even longer than before and I really don't want to wait that long. But another form of entertainment rolls around, in the form of a shopping cart full of duty-free booze. Holy ****! This **** is gonna last us a while. It's like Christmas for adults: beer, vodka, gin (in what looks like a gasoline bottle)--all the wonders of the alcoholic world ...

... but it isn't. Apparently many buildings in Belgium (and probably Europe generally) were destroyed during various wars and were reconstructed after the wars using the original bricks (early recycling!). So, whereas we had always assumed that a building made of really old materials was a really old building, it turns out that many of these buildings are actually from the 1920s. Chris knew this all along (it is possible to tell from the ...