Antwerp - Fashion, Printing and more Buildings

Apologies for the lack of blogging. We have been oh so busy, and playing with computer has been quite far from my thoughts. We awarded ourselves a 'day off' today - so I thought that I would begin to catch up....

In previous days.......

From Bruges we headed for Antwerp - on the promise that there would be free(ish) parking in an Aire. Giving over full control to the Sat Nav we headed there and, remarkably, arrived in exactly the right place - which was the Antwerp Expo centre. It was getting on a bit in hours, so I found a place to park and took my shoes off. On the way in we had noticed a smallish hut, but no obvious signs as what to do (at least not in a language that I understood), so we went and parked.

Shortly after I had removed my trainers there was a knock on the door and a man enquired as to whether I was going to come to his place to pay, now. I answered that I would come immediately, and looked for my crocs to put on. I left the van and he had gone. I assume he cycled to me - seeing as I had driven straight past his hut. I found him, paid, gained information on transport into Antwerp and returned to the van. 

The site had no toilets or water, but did have chemical toilet emptying facilities and free wifi (odd). The cost for the site was 8 Euros - which wasn't too bad I thought. The surroundings were not too great - but it was fairly quiet and close enough to the centre to catch a tram.

Antwerp itself was interesting - but much like any other large city, except for the 'old town' - which seems to be the case in a lot of these places. Pictures of the 'Old Town'-

Whilst looking through attractions for Antwerp K had seen the Fashion Museum and Printing Museum ads. We had to go there of course - I must admit that the printing museum was good and very interesting, but I don't think that I would go back to the fashion place - it seemed mainly to be a retrospective of the famous fashion designers that had been produced from the Antwerp College.

 The printing museum was the base of the Plantin-Moretus printing empire:

All set in a rather splendid building. I will publish links to the various things here when I have a better connection.

Onward into Belgium

After spending three nights in the French campsite near Lille we set course for pastures new in Belgium. We picked a campsite pretty much at random from the ASCII camp book, and so ended up near the coast at a place named De Haan An Zee.
 
The campsite manager fitted us in for two nights - we found ourselves on hard standing, which was actually the base for a static caravan. It was fine though, because it had it's own water, power and drainage all to hand. It was very warm when we arrived, so hot in fact that in was almost painful to sit in the sun. I took the bikes off of the rack and we went exploring. Luckily we found a small supermarket open - meaning that that I could buy some wine. The evening was fairly fine, but that changed next morning, when we woke to the promise of rain, and major dark clouds.
 

We walked to the town, then took a tram to Ostend. Finally a train to Bruges. After a spectacular fail at finding the tourist information office at the station (it's on the right as you come out ) we walked into the centre of Bruges. Lots of nice buildings and more than enough chances to pacify the shopping demon. I resisted the Christmas shops, chocolate shops, waffle shops etc. I did, however, succumb to a beer emporium, which boasted a 'beer wall' comprising what seemed to be several hundred beers, and their glasses all behind plexi glass. It was impressive. We both had a beer and warmed ourselves by their external flame heaters. 
 

The rain started in earnest, and we rapidly started our return journey. We arrived back at the van after carrying out the reverse of our outward trip. We were soaked. We hung our clothes to dry in the shower room. Today - Monday - we drove to Antwerp.  I am writing this on my phone, from an aire just outside the city - at the Expo centre. They have free wifi !