Antwerp

[This is post 2 in a series of 3 about our trip to Europe:
Amsterdam -> Antwerp -> Paris]

After a nice weekend in Amsterdam, Anya's cousin Natasha and her husband Hans Peter left to go back home to Switzerland. As I said before, it was great to meet them; hopefully we will get to visit them sometime soon.

The 6 of us remaining were leaving Amsterdam and heading off to Paris on the train. That journey would take us through Belgium, and we wanted to stop somewhere to get a quick taste of that country. I'd been to Brussels previously and was somewhat underwhelmed; this time we chose Belgium's second city: Antwerp.

I'll let the comments we've added to the pictures speak to our time in Antwerp. I'll just say here that it was a pleasant city to spend a few hours in between trains, although it's probably not big enough to justify a whole lot more than 1 day for the typical tourist.

Some interesting Antwerp facts to think about:

• It's the capitol of the region of Flanders; which is the northern half of Belgium (Wallonia is the southern half)
• The language of Flanders is Flemish, which is a version of Dutch (Wallonia is French-speaking)
• Antwerp is the third busiest port in Europe (only Rotterdam and Hamburg handle more cargo)
• Antwerp is the diamond capitol of the world; about 80% of all the world's diamonds pass through the city to be traded
  
• Antwerp has one of the largest communities of Orthodox Jews in the world outside Israel