Antwerpen Centraal, Anvers Central, Antwerp Central station is a magnificent neo-Romanesque monument. I knew this, because I have a jigsaw puzzle which features the entrance hall.
So of course I had to go and look at it.
We were actually planning to go last year, before my mother died. That trip happened last June in the end, but was rather curtailed, and Antwerp was one of the bits we had to cut. So this year it got a trip of its own.
We took the night ferry from Harwich and, having taken the whole day off in order to get there with minimal stress, thought we might as well stay on the train to Harwich Town at the end of the line. It made for a pleasant, if breezy, wander, but it seemed to have jumped straight into the off-season and very little was open. That, combined with a poorly toddler who didn’t like the wind at all, rather limited our options. We were extremely relieved to find that a place called Tea@Patricia’s was open and serving very good cakes.
Even Patricia wouldn’t stay open until check-in opened, though, so we decided that the ferry terminal was as good a place as any to eat fish and chips. Very good fish and chips, as it turned out. (Take the train to Dovercourt and go to the Fish House.) I have no complaints about the food in Harwich.
Over the years my overnight ferry bookings have become steadily less spartan. Back in 2007 it was a reclining seat. Ten years later it was a cabin, but nothing fancy. This time round we went for the one with two beds (one double, one single), room to turn around in the bathroom, and a window. Luxury. But I am appreciating sleep more these days, and also somebody has to stay in the cabin after child bedtime, so it’s worth making it slightly nicer.
Anyway, no matter how luxurious, or otherwise, one’s sleeping arrangements, it is exciting to see the ship coming in, and a pain in the backside to get through security and entry/exit (I seem to have defective fingerprints; the officers keep asking me to press harder when I’m already pressing as hard as I can), and it is a long walk up the ramp, and it is very exciting indeed to step on board. And, assuming one gets to sleep, it’s great fun to go to sleep in one country and wake up in another. I’ve done this crossing a few times now, and the red lighthouse at Hoek van Holland is becoming a friend.
Then it’s light rail to Schiedam and main line into the middle of Rotterdam, and then you’re really talking connections. I saw a Swiss loco, complete with boxy pantograph and Jungfrau branding, trundling through the middle of Rotterdam Centraal as if we were thousands of metres above sea level rather than flirting with minus figures. We were only going to Belgium, but, you know, it’s still pretty cool to just buy a ticket to a different nation state from a machine in the booking hall and then step onto a train.
A direct train to Antwerp, bound for Brussels and stopping at Breda and Noorderkempen on the way. I was hoping for a double decker, but I don’t think they run those on the Eurocity route. I got a window seat, anyway. Coming from the Fens, it’s a familiar landscape you see from it, flat and green with trees and ditches ruling it into neat rectangles. Sometimes Doggerland feels like it’s only just under the surface of the water.
And then Antwerp. Of course, arriving, you don’t get the magnificence that the residents see when they book their tickets. It’s not bad, though. Arriving from the Netherlands, the train pulls up somewhere close to the Earth’s mantle and if the lifts are broken (they were) you have to navigate a series of stairs and escalators (roltrap in Dutch, lovely word), and as you ascend you see more and more of the back view of that gigantic fanlight. There’s a certain Brutalist grandeur to the concrete platforms that draw the eye there, I suppose.
After our “metro at rush hour” experience in Lyon earlier in the year, I’d booked a room as close to the station as we could get, and I am making a note to myself here and now that this was a good idea and I should do it again. There’s the obvious practical advantage, of course, but it also makes it easier to avoid the magnetic draw of the historic, touristy bit. Plus there are trams and buses going to the historic, touristy bit, and plenty of places to eat. (Note: it would not be a good idea in Rotterdam, though.) In Antwerp there is also the zoo.
So that was our weekend: eating down the road from our hotel, wandering around the city in search of a playground; taking the tram to Melkmarkt for a glance at the square with the rococo fountain and the stepped gables, stopping to chat to a local mum and toddler (children are brilliant conversation starters), visiting the cathedral, and spending the entire afternoon at the zoo.
It was great. Chips with mayonnaise. Some awkward questions about what exactly is going on in Rubens’ Raising of the Cross and why is the baby sad. Coffee and toasties at a vegetarian café recommended by the local mum. A really satisfying wander around a Turkish-run ironmongery, resulting in the purchase of a pair of child’s sunglasses. A quick look at the exterior of the castle. Admiring art nouveau and art deco doorways.
We paid to get into the cathedral and into the zoo and didn’t regret either. In general I disapprove of places of worship charging entrance fees, but Antwerp cathedral is free for locals and under-18s, and there was a really excellent, thoughtful and thought-provoking, leaflet, and I found that I didn’t mind. As for the zoo, gosh, that was a lot of money, but that was also a lot of zoo, which managed to be surprisingly spacious given it’s right in the middle of town, behind the station.
After the zoo we went into the station from the other side, and it did indeed look just like my jigsaw:
It was almost too perfect. I was relieved to turn around and see a Prêt à Manger.
On Sunday it was raining in Antwerp and we could see it wasn’t raining in Rotterdam, so we returned to the station (discovering that it is indeed such a famous monument that an Asian couple was getting wedding photos done on the steps) and took a train north.
There is nothing helpful near the station in Rotterdam. There are various shops and fast food places in the station itself, but once you’re outside it’s a wasteland of bank headquarters and other forbidding high rise office blocks. But we’d worked this out the last time we were there, and we put our bags in the luggage lockers and took a tram to Beurs, which is the middle of the shopping district. We got welly boots in Hema and burgers and chips in Hkiki, and this was all very satisfying.
And finally, having gone to the end of the line at Harwich, we went to the end of the line at Hoek too, and spent a quarter of an hour on the beach, digging in the sand and watching other people’s kites, and then, when we were tired of the breeze, half an hour in a bar, watching the waves roll in. We saw our ship come in, too; and a couple of hours later we boarded it, and overnight it carried us home.
