Beautiful Belgium

We had three nights in Belgium, and loved our wee snippet. 

We sadly farewelled our lovely France home of a month and took a BlaBlaCar from Saint Armond Montrond to Waterloo in Belgium. It was a 6 hour journey with a lovely Belgium couple about our age. 

Waterloo 

We stayed just down the road from the Waterloo battlefield where Napoleon in June 1815 lost his last battle, which was against the Duke of Wellington. We enjoyed looking around the museum, The Lion's Mound, which is a large conical artificial hill commemorating the location erected in 1824, plus the Panorama Rotunda, which housed a panoramic painting of the battle.





Antwerp

We had two nights here, a lovely port city on Belgium's River Scheldt, with history dating back to the Middle Aged. Our accommodation was in the old quarters which we always enjoy experiencing. Our first site was all the bikes outside the bus/metro station entrance.



We enjoyed walking around see the architecture and the busy port. There was an underpass which went from one bank to the other. St Anna's Tunnel or Underpass was opened in 1933, with authentic wooden escalators. It was built so the shipping traffic was not hindered. There is also a free ferry that goes regularly between the two banks. 


Paul had his Amsterdam experience while we were walking the streets. We stumbled across the Red Light District - in the middle of the day, small boutique windows with the ladies on display ready and waiting - sad!! Age range from early 20s to older than me and trans too - a purple light instead of red light for Trans.

We really enjoyed walking the old quarters, with interesting architecture and gothic styled cathedral, amazing train station building, interesting squares, just a neat place!













We of course had to experience Belgium Chocolate, so we went to a chocolate museum - Chocolate Nation - The Belgium Chocolate Experience. It was awesome!  The 14 themed rooms took us through the story of Belgian chocolate, from cocoa plantations to the largest cocoa storage port in the world - Antwerp. The visual mechanical displays, the history, the brands and innovations - really informative and interesting.  One room had an amazing animation - watch the you-tube clip showing some of it. We had to sit at a dinner table and the show began - really cute! Then to finish off the experience you entered the tasting room with 10 melted chocolate pots: white, ruby (their newest chocolate - red naturally from the cocoa bean), caramel, and 7 different levels of cocoa percentage brown chocolate. You just poured to your hearts content onto a spoon and enjoyed!





We had to hire bikes of course and enjoyed looking further down the port and seeing amazing street art under the roads.







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