Wednesday: Off to a new country

Got a reasonable start on the day and headed for the central train station again. Grabbed a coffee and fresh squeezed (literally) orange juice at a market in the train station along with a couple croissants. It never ceases to amaze me how a crumby little train station convenience store still has pretty good food. Damn Europeans. The train to Antwerp was interesting, if not life changing. We made pit stops in The Haag, Rotterdam, Delft, and a few others in the south of Holland. The Rhine was enormous at it's mouth. Cool to see.

Antwerp's train station is truly one of a kind. Gorgeous. Worth a see even if you only grab an afternoon in Antwerp. Our hostel is half way between the old town and the train station, so reasonably central. Old town is definitely not dutch any more. No canals, just the windy, twisting streets radiating out from the cathedral. The cathedral was pretty dominating, although we didn't go in for the 6 Euros. Most of our afternoon was spent meandering the streets. They have a crazy long pedestrian tunnel to the other side of the river (not sure why?) that we walked just for the heck of it. It's way down there (a couple long, wooden escalators of all things). I'll have to read up on the history of it.

We begrudgingly did a quick run around a small park near our hostel in the afternoon. Legs weren't feeling amazing, but we got out there and gave it a shot.

For dinner, we trekked back down to the older part of town. A couple happyish hour drinks of Jenever. Evidently, an ancestor to Gin that's still around in this part of Europe. The guy had 200 types, ranging from more corn notes, to gin, or fruit. I had a gin type and a hazelnut "fruit". Actually pretty smooth. The hazelnut was sweet and you could barely taste the alcohol at 20%. Not a bad first experience.

We had found a Moroccan place for dinner. Large portions, unique food, and reasonable prices. Kate's reportedly favorite meal of the trip thus far. Very hard to complain for me as well with most of the above things that I value.

Antwerp has been cool to check out, but we're planning a day trip to Lier tomorrow. Time for some more biking and beer drinking.