Antwerp

I didn't have enough time in Antwerp to see the things I wanted to see so I definitely want to go back there! It's only a two hour train so it'd be easy to go back for a day.

Wednesday morning I went to Rubens House which is now a museum with paintings by Peter Paul Rubens, paintings from his studio, and by some of his contemporaries. An interesting fact is that many of his larger paintings he would sketch out and then the students from his studio would do most of the work of actually painting it. Then Rubens would come in at the end and fix some parts and do the details on the important objects or people in the paintings.

In the Grote Markt

My grandparents were taking a 2 week cruise along the Rhine and Mosel Rivers and their last stop was Antwerp. That's how this trip got started for me. I wanted to meet up with them in Antwerp and then I decided to make it a longer trip to some other cities. I met up with them by the boat, we showed each other our pictures from our trips and then we went out to lunch. I had pumpkin ravioli with candied ginger, macadamia nuts, carrots, and sweet curry. It was so delicious and if you know me, you know I love pumpkin flavored things so that was exciting that they had that. After lunch we went back to the boat and played a game of cards. I sent with my grandpa a couple packages of stroopwafels (I want these to catch on the States so I can buy them there!), black licorice and a stack of postcards for my mom to mail out. I was given some Reese's, pumpkin spice M&M's, and pumpkin spice hershey kisses sent by my awesome mom! The pumpkin spice things are so good! I've been deprived of pumpkin flavored things here, it's not very popular.

In the afternoon I went to the Cathedral of Our Lady which is a huge church in the center of Antwerp. Inside they have some huge paintings by Rubens that he painted specifically for the church and some by other painters as well. It was gorgeous inside!

I took the train back to the Hague and that was the end of my trip. I had a great time  but I was happy to be back in my own room and able to get some rest. Next weekend I'll be in Amsterdam with one of my best friends which I'm really excited about! I'm sure I'll have lots of pictures to share from that.