Mood:
a-okTopic: Trip to Antwerp
Yesterday, Friday, was a Teacher Parent meeting day so there were no classes for the students. Adriana and I traveled to Antwerp (Antwerpen in Netherlands; Anvers in French) to visit the "City of Diamonds"
What a beautiful day to go traveling. Thursday and Friday, were both sunny and warm. It was the first time I've gone anywheres without my big winter jacket since November.
Because it is located so close to the Netherlands, Dutch is the city's official language, but most Dutch speaking people can also speak English.
As soon as you leave the train station, you enter the 'Jewish Quarter' where there are tons and tons of Jewlery shops and over 20,000 Jewish residents whos ancestors have inhabited Anvers since the XII century. Today, Anvers is the biggest diamond center in the world. (1/4 of all diamonds in the world are origionally from Anvers... therefore I would bet that even Britney Spears has diamonds from that city.) We visited Diamondland, an exposition building that shows the cutting and sculpting of diamonds... visiters can make purchases also: for a 0.01 size was 15 American dollars--> 0.05 was, I think, 77 dollars. The sizes ranged from 0.01 all the way up to 0.50!
'La Maison de Rubens'or (The House of Rubens) was our second stop of the day. It is where, during the the early 1600's, the famous flemish painter, Peter Paul Rubens, once lived. He has become an official representation of Anvers and in his life, Rubens created nearly 2,500 works of art including paintings and sculptures. His interest was mainly to paint religieus, historic, and mythologic scenes but he also contributed, as it was clearly demonstrated when we visit his house, to the architectural branch of art.
4 or 5 clothing and shoe stores later, we arrived in the 'Groen Plaats'-in Netherlands or (Grand Place) where you can sit around the fountains and pic-nic or rest. Still in the Quartier of the Grand-Place is 'La Cathedrale' or (The Cathedral). The largest of 4 Churches in Anvers, it holds the title of the biggest Gothic Church in the 'Ancient Lower Countries'
A hop, skip and a jump down the road from the cathedral, at the entrance of 'le quartier de la Mode et des Beaux-Arts' (The Fashion and Arts Quarter), is 'Le Musee de la Mode' (the Museum of Fashion) where collections from the Flanders Fashion Institute are displayed. (Such bizarre things... the fashion world is crazy!)
Further south, rests the Museum of Arts where most of Ruben's works are displayed. But that, along with The Museum of Contemporary art and the Museum of Photography, were too far away for Adriana and I to walk to.
The train ride home laster 2 and a half hours (when normally it takes an hour and a half to get from Liege to Anvers)because we went home early and took the first train to Brussels, then a connecting one to Liege that took a path similar to this
---> /\/\/\ <----instead of waiting for the train that went directly to Liege. + 20 minues of walking from Adriana's house to mine = 1 exhausting day.
But I'm sure we took some great photos!:)
And this morning started out to be another good day like yesterday. I woke up around 9:30 and after breakfast, went for a walk with Charles and Guillaume. I took the same route as we had taken the morning that we went rabit searching, but we didn't see any bunnies. :( It was amusing all the same and Charles took a good solid 2 hour nap when we got home.
By 2 in the afternoon it was raining like my host dad had predicted it would and I don't think I've done much since then.
Adriana left for Amsterdam this morning with WEP; I hope the weather is nicer there for her than it is here.
~~ Tonight I am babysitting for my host family who is out at a barbacue with some friends. The kids just finished watching a hockey movie 'Miracle' and are now in bed, sleeping... I hope. My host dad rented the movie 'O' for me to see this evening, so I'm going to sign off and
--if that fax machine doesn't stop going off I think I'm going to have to break it (!!)
... see my movie.
-ciao!
