Antwerp was the last leg on our tour of Belgium before heading to Amsterdam. It’s a short train ride from Ghent, and it’s possible to see almost everything in a day. Antwerp is home to one of the biggest ports in the world, renown for its shipping; it’s the second largest in Europe. It’s also got quite an interesting backstory to its name.

Town Hall

Town hall is located in a fairly large plaza. It’s a pretty cool looking building, isn’t it? You’ll know you’ve found it when you see a large statue with people climbing all over it to take a picture. The statue depicts how Antwerp got it’s name. In Flemish, the name of the city it “Antwerpen”. A long time ago, there was a giant named Antigoon that lived on the Scheldt River. He charged a fee for people to cross the river. If they could not pay, he would cut off their hand. One day, a man named Brabo killed the giant by cutting off his hand. He threw it into the river and thus Antwerpen was born (hand warpen; warpen means to throw).

We saw ANOTHER cathedral: Cathedral of Our Lady. There were a lot of really famous paintings in this church, but it cost money to go in to see the paintings, so we just went into the prayer area to get a free look at the cathedral. As we had seen many cathedrals, many of them had begun to run together. What I do remember though is that the outside of the cathedral is really awesome looking.

Take a Walk

After lunch, we walked around some more to try to discover more of the city. We accidentally ended up in the “red-light district” of Antwerp (super sketchy …). Along the river, there’s a small castle. It looks like a castle you see in a typical medieval-themed movie. There’s also this really weird statue in front of the castle that shows a man (a giant?) who is … ummm … flashing … two onlookers. Interesting.

Near the port, there is also a museum that allows you to go to the top to get a panoramic view of the city. Even if the museum is closed, you can still go up top and see everything.

To escape the cold, we found another church, St. Paul’s Church, but it closed ten minutes after we got there, so we only go relief for a minute. We did, however, come across a really awesome chocolate bar: Quetzal Chocolate Bar. You could get a coffee with chocolate in the coffee; they had brownies; they had so many chocolate themed goodies! Everyone enjoyed what they got and the atmosphere was super laid back and chill. If I lived in Antwerp, I would go there all the time.

The rest of the night we just spent going from café to restaurant to wherever else was warm. Antwerp, although probably my least favorite city we had visited, was still a great place to go to. I really enjoyed our time in Belgium and I’m so grateful for having had the opportunity to visit it. I definitely recommend that you go to Belgium at least once, especially if you like beer. Even if you don’t (like me), everything is just so beautiful and it truly is a different place than the rest of Europe.