We had a rather poor night's sleep in Antwerp as there was some big and loud motor thing in a neighbouring factory that turned on and off all night. Oh well, it settled our decision on whether or not we'd stay another night and we could also get a head start on the day. We dressed up warmly not knowing that the weather would improve, and we'd end up looking silly in jeans when most were wearing shorts. See - there's wisdom in sleeping in! My coffee still hadn't taken effect when we packed up, so we forgot to take a photo of our last campsite (we've got one of all the others!).

We walked into the city through St Anna's Tunnel - an old tunnel built under the river and quickly found the city square. There were lots of unsecured wireless networks floating about and my luck was in when one of them gave free access to the internet. Rebecca had to hold up a map to shade the screen from the sun, but we managed to find a cheap hotel in the Netherlands for our final night. Pity she didn't have a palm leaf to wave in my direction too :)

Being a Saturday, it was wedding day, and there were lots of bridal parties in the square going to the registry office in the town hall. We enjoyed a bit of people-watching and particularly liked the one whose wedding transport was VW Kombi vans.

Antwerp is not as nice looking as Bruges, but it's bigger and is Belgium's second city. It has a nice square with an unusual fountain (the Brabo fountain) with a man throwing another man's hand. We couldn't figure it out and we've yet to Google the significance. Close by is an old church with some paintings in it, but we didn't feel the need to venture in.

Were told the central station was pretty so we walked through the shopping district on our way there. We saw lots and lots and lots of shops and the streets were packed with people. Needing some refuge, we stopped for lunch and enjoyed, surprise surprise, more Belgian beer :) This was followed by a long walk and then a pair of yummy Belgian waffles, one plain and the other smothered in Belgian chocolate, mmmm, which in turn was followed by a long walk along the river front and through the tunnel back to where we started.

We had some unfinished business in Belgium, so we went to a supermarket and picked out our dinner refreshments consisting of one of each different fruit beer we could find. We felt like kids in a candy store picking out one of this and one of that :)

There's not much to report from our drive to the hotel in the Netherlands, but the hotel itself was in the middle of a very pretty wood and we enjoyed being in the bush after a long time surrounded by concrete.

- Brett