Antwerp

Our last week started a little early, on Friday, as we moved out of our dorms in Amsterdam and took a train with all our stuff to Antwerp, Belgium.

This was the train station.  Amazing.

We took all our stuff to the Hotel Leonardo.  It looked really cool but we soon discovered that the heads are a tad bit freaky at night.

The city of Antwerp has a legend that a giant was terrorizing the city and a guy, in order to stop him, cut off his hand and threw it into the river.  Although I'm not sure why the giant couldn't do anything with just one hand missing.

We took a walk around the city and went to a cathedral.

There were tons of Rubens there.  They are pretty amazing in real life.

I also found a grave of my ancestors (?)

After the cathedral we went to an outdoor sculpture park.  At least until the guards on bikes threw us out.

Dinner that night was at Chi-Chi's.  I thought it was going to be the same restaurant as the one that used to be in Michigan, but no go.  And I was really looking forward to those corn cakes.

On Saturday we headed to a museum.  (I could look up the name, but frankly, I'm too tired.)  This museum held a nice mix of old and new stuff.

It's most famous piece is this one by Jean Fouquet.  His Virgin is really strange looking.  (Plus her boobs don't match.)

After that we headed to the roof where we got a nice view of the city.

As we were heading to the next museum we walked by the gay pride parade.  I've seen better, but still entertaining.

The next museum was a contemporary art museum that had an exhibit by the American artist, Jimmy Durham.  Half way through the exhibit my professor, Steve, came up to me and said, "Well.  This guy is a smart ass."  I told him that's why I liked him.

After that we all went to big group dinner.  There I tried horse meat.  That's right, horse meat.  It was amazingly delicious.  After dinner a few of us walked to a tunnel that goes under the river.  Our professor said that it is an amazing Art Deco tunnel that was well worth the visit.  Looked like every subway station I've been too.  Granted, the smell was slightly better.

Next we headed to the ferris wheel that was right outside our hotel.  Couldn't see much but we jammed to the strange 40s music they were playing.  After that we were super tired and had to get up early to head to Bruge, so bed it was.