Belgium

Belgium is a great place and Antwerp was a perfect city for our port. We were fortunate enough in Antwerp to have a superb docking place right downtown. It’s a fun city to walk around in with lots of shopping, delicious food, and beautiful buildings. I spent the first day wondering around Antwerp with a couple of friends, and then later went off to see Ruben’s house and the Museum of Contemporary Art. Ruben’s house was neat although there has been so much great art on this trip that I have become a bit desensitized and I am feeling less and less excited about religious paintings and icons. Not that it was a big draw for me in the first place, but I was enjoying them more initially. The Museum of Contemporary Art was also a bit of a disappointment. It was mostly conceptual art which I often don’t understand.

Antwerp, Belgium

The next day I went to Gent and Bruge with Laura the art history professor, another RD and her partner. It was a lot of fun. July 21 is Belgium’s Independence Day so there were a lot of festivals and parties. We stayed in Gent for only a couple hours, just long enough to see the Gent Altarpiece which Laura demanded we all see. It was very impressive. Painted by Jon Van Eyck and his brother in the 1500’s the style is very detailed and realistic. There is also debate about which part Jon did and which part his brother did. Either way it’s impressive. After a lunch of mussels and beer we took the train to the charming town of Bruge. Laura and I went to enjoy some art work at a Cathedral and then I left Laura at the Memling Museum because I was just too tired to enjoy it. I wondered around on my own and had a delicious waffle with chocolate poured over it, although it was so rich it gave me a stomach ache. Later on we all met up and wondered around some more before dinner and caught the final train back to the ship in Antwerp.

The train station in Antwerp - on the way to Gent and Bruge

Me eating delicious mussels in Gent

On the third morning I took a 2-hour train to Amsterdam on my own. I spent the day by myself in Amsterdam and had a great time (don’t worry mom even though I was traveling alone no one attacked me). J First I took the tram to the Van Gogh museum. Van Gogh is from The Netherlands and they have a gorgeous museum dedicated to his work and other work from the same time period. I spend nearly 3 hours in the museum and really enjoyed it. This was quite refreshing considering I was getting so tired of museums. I think part of it is that I like Van Gogh’s work more than the 15th and 16th century oil paintings which we keep seeing so much of. I might have to breeze through those in the Lourve (oh yeah, by the way, we are skipping London due to the bombings and going to France instead). After the museum and lunch I wondered around the many shops in Amsterdam, did a little shopping and made my way to Anne Frank’s house.

Anne Frank’s House was amazing. It was not what I expected. It’s been a while since I read her diary, but the place was bigger and more urban than I expected. Her family and four others lived there for two years and shortly before the war ended. Someone leaked their existence and the Nazis caught them. Everyone except the father died in the concentration camp only one month before liberation. It was very powerful and sad to see Anne Frank’s house and museum only a few days after visiting Auschwitz. It helped me appreciate more fully what they went through.

Anne Frank's House

Belgium is a wonderful place. I enjoyed the mixture of traveling by myself and with friends. I am looking forward to France and seeing Sarah!