visit the surrounding areas as... and other Antwerp, Belgium General Tips

Favorite Thing: visit the surrounding areas as well.
Take the bus 18 at the Groenplaats and let you drive to the Middelheim park, open air museum with appealing statues.
The Park consists out of 2 places, seperated by a road.
It is closed on Mondays

Middelheim Park is nice in any seasons but if you want to take the best pictures
I would recomend Spring or Autumn because some of the statues are located under
a tree and in Summer it might be too dark to take the right shot. Should you want to view the pictures on different sizes, then feel free to visit my travelogues

Fondest Memory: you can visit my e-albums on webshots

Leave a Comment

Favorite Thing: Take the bus 25 at the Groenplaats and let you drive to one of the most extra ordinary cemeteries in Belgium, in Hoboken, called Schoonselhof.

I think it is worthwhile visiting this site where a lot of famous Flemish people,
writers, painters, politicians are burried.
There is a war cemetary as well.
And a part of the cemetary was reservated for Jewish as they never move the
dead and the graves are for ever.
But all together, it is a nice park to walk through even if it is a cemetary.
photo
album 1
photo
album 2
photo
album 3


Fondest Memory: Do visit my travelogues

Leave a Comment

Favorite Thing: visit the flee markets!
the one at the picture is held every Sunday at the square 't Sand, Sint Pietersvliet.

Fondest Memory: It is fun to go through all the old stuff (and second hand stuff).
Maybe you can buy yourself a few beerglasses to take with you?
They might be less expensive then the ones you buy in the regular shop... except if the model is old and became a collector's item!

Leave a Comment

Favorite Thing: Real shopping or window shopping at the Meir.

Fondest Memory: Keep an eye on your wallet all the time!
'-)

Leave a Comment

Favorite Thing: Wapper.

The Wapper looks like a little square at your right on the Meir when you keep the Central Station in your back.

It is in this street that you can find the Rubens Museum and it connects the Meir with the Theatre and Fashion district.

Fondest Memory: Rather not so fondest memory:

Not all times this Wapper looked like a square.

Until the 60ties, it consisted out of two narrow streets with houses on the spot of the fountain.

But some very honestly project developers thought that if they demolish those old houses they could make an EXIT!!!! of the HIGHWAY!!!! directly coming into the CENTER!!! of the city!

I think a lot of profit must have been sticking on this project to tear down historical buildings and get a excit of a highway in almost the middle of this historical centre!!!

Lucky there were still people with brains and a little contra political power that could convince the responsables that if you have an excite... it means the cars need to be going SOMEWHERE!!???

So where were they supposed to go?
They would have been obliged to tear down more historical beautiful houses in order to make a road to let the cars drive further into the city.
Oef!!! Someone listened!!!

So no highway excit (people who have been on the highway around Antwerp will know how crazy this idea must have been!!! the idea of a lunatic!) but the houses at the Wapper were gone, so they just made the place look a little nicer and added a fountain.

Some other moron however decided to build a very VERRRY UGGLY tourist information desk just in front of the beautiful house of Rubens.

Now you can forget to put it nicely on a picture.

The UGGLY AQUARIUM is blocking the nice view!!!

Do people that come up with these kind of infrastructure ever get carried away in a long with coat with their arms tied up ??? in a little white van with a bleu flickering light on it?

Or worse... Do these people actually get PAID??? for those architectural monsters?

Every time I look at it I feel that the good taste of esthetics is raped again :-((

Pls Antwerp, hasn't it been enough???

Leave a Comment

Favorite Thing: At Meir 85, almost the opposite side of the Wapper you can see the beautiful front of the Osterrieth House

Fondest Memory: On working days, the door is open and you can have a glance in the nice hall and the attached rooms (bank).
Feel free to visit my travelogues

Leave a Comment

Favorite Thing: Sint Andries kerk/Saint Andrew's Church.
I have put some of the info I found on the small pape, that you can buy in the church,
in my travelogues.
I hope I can add some more pictures with the accordingly info over the next months.

Fondest Memory: Situated in the Sint Andries area of the city (between the old centre and the South)

Pls feel free to visit my travelogues

Leave a Comment

Favorite Thing: Don't miss a walk through the pedestrian tunnel, leading you to the other side of the River.
During day, you can use the automatic stairs, during the evening and nights you have to use the elevator.

Then enterance is at Het Zand in the building shown on the picture.
More pictures in a new upcoming travelogue soon!

Fondest Memory: It was built in the 50ties and the tunnel is about 550 meter long.

Halfway used to be a painting of a mairmaid to mark the half of the tunnel, but some silly brain thought it necessary to paint it over when whitening the walls again.

Some people you really have to lock up for the sake of all '-)
The accoustic is very nice there and once we had a party stop (we did a pub crawl then) in the middle (when the mairmaid was still there), we had our jenever and music and we sang happy birth-day to the 'party-animal' and believe me: It sounded terrific!!!!

Take a look at the travelogues!

Leave a Comment

Favorite Thing: Take a walk near the river and watch the sun going down :-)


Leave a Comment

Favorite Thing: At het Zand you can spot that weird Art Deco building at one side of the square. It is the entrance of the pedestrial tunel that takes you to the leftbank.
Ofcourse we had to try out the old wooden automatic stairs!

Fondest Memory: Most fun we had was scaring off 2 guys... but you better read that at Chiara's pages!
(Pollon on VT)

Leave a Comment