September 25 - Antwerp

Today we took the train to the port of Antwerp.  The trip was through rural farmland.  The crops seemed to be mainly corn and beans.  There also were a lot of cattle and sheep.  The land is very flat and the farms are separated by tracks of trees.

Antwerp is one of the largest and oldest ports in the world and the largest city in Belgium.  It is a very modern city as it has been rebuilt several times in the twentieth century because it was destroyed during the first and second world wars.  It has managed to retain some older buildings in the Grote Market, that gives it a distinct characteristic.

With a prime spot on the Scheldt River, Antwerp rapidly became Western Europe’s greatest economic centre by the middle of the fourteenth century., The city was a trading, cultural and intellectual centre in Europe with a population of 100,000 with bustling docks and new mansions. Later during the same century, Antwerp lost is power when the Protestants citizens left the city after it was conquered by the Catholic Spanish forces.  During this religious war more than eight thousand citizens were slaughter by the Spanish. Fifty years later the diamond trade allowed Antwerp to regain its power. It attracted many popular artist including its native son Peter Paul Rubens.

By the second half of the nineteenth century Antwerp had become the world’s third-largest port after London and New York, due largely to new rail links connecting it with other parts of Europe. It has been recorded that at one time, forty percent of the worlds commerce passed through this port.

The city hosted the Olympic Games in 1920 and, in 1928, construction began on Europe’s first skyscraper.

Scheldt River from the MAS Museum

Antwerp in the Second World War, it became a strategic port for supplying the Allies after the D-Day invasion.  After the city was liberated it became the responsibility of Canadian troops to dislodge the German troops that still occupied the river banks which allowed them to stop the Allies supplies from arriving in the port.  Many of our troops died in this battle, although they eventually succeeded in defeating the Nazis.











We both thought the city was clean and we felt very safe in walking along the streets and alleyways.

Antwerp is known for its diamond industry.  Indeed they claim that all the world's cut diamonds at one time or another pass through this city.  In the Square Kilometre Diamond district there a large number of jewellery shops with amazing diamonds on display.  There brilliance of these stones is blinding. We went to one store and were very impressed with quality of the diamonds.  Their clarity is remarkable.  It takes days for diamond cutter to shape a diamond and smooth the rock into the required  fifty eight facets or edges. This one store now produces a diamond the 204 facets.  The price of the diamonds is way beyond our budget.  The cheapest diamond on display went for about $ 4,500 and the most expensive went for about $35,000.

Diamond store in the Square Kilometre Diamond district

In the afternoon we went on a city tour.  Our first stop was the MAS museum.  It had an exhibition on the Belgium refugees from the First World War and how welcomed they were in France, England and Holland.  It makes you think when you compare this with today’s treatment of Syrian refugees.

Modern art outside of MAS

From the top of the MAS you get a panoramic view of the city.  One of the apartment buildings has giant models scaling its walls.


























We then stopped in the Grote Market that hosts the City Hall and the Cathedral of Our Lady.  The city hall and its surrounding buildings have wonderful gold statues on their peaks of their roofs.

Antwerp City Hall

In the Cathedral of Our Lady there is a series of paintings by Peter Paul Rubens.  Rubens was born in Antwerp in 1577 and is considered one of the premiere artists of this area.

Descent from the Cross by Peter Paul Rubens

The architecture of the train station is famous. The station is considered an European highlight for its designs.  Along the way we saw a Tesla car on display. Unfortunately there was no price tag.

For supper tonight we stumbled into a small restaurant called the Grand Cafe Belfort.  Marg had Dover Sole which she loved and I had Flemish stew which I was not crazy about.  Flemish stew is a beef stew cooked in dark beer.  It has no potatoes and no vegetables and the gravy was too sweet. The service was OK but not up to standards we've had in other restaurants.