Recent reviews Antwerp
[hannah_i, 11/07/2011] This Roman Catholic Gothic cathedral is quite unusual looking, due to the missing spire - but is still very beautiful. Although the architecture on the exterior is quite intricate and includes delicate gold clock faces on the spire, the inside is slightly plain compared to a number of other Gothic cathedrals which I have visited. Daily mass is said, which makes a change to a regular church and is certainly useful for anyone needing to get to mass!
[koshkha, 04/08/2010] The factory I visit in Belgium is based in the Merksem suburb of Antwerp. Or possibly it's not a suburb - it might even be a separate town, I'm really not sure. The company has a canteen but it's pretty dire so if I'm lucky to visit for a special event or to find a frustrated colleague looking for an excuse to escape for a hot lunch, we pretty much always go to Tot Straks. My recent visit coincided with the 'leaving lunch' of a colleague and I was invited along.
Tot Straks - which translates as roughly 'See you later' - is on Bredabaan in the centre for Merksem. It's open for both lunch and
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[koshkha, 04/08/2010] In May, my colleague Karin asked if I'd like to go out for dinner. Monday nights in Antwerp are difficult for eating out because the majority of restaurants are closed. She found a local website with restaurant listings, selected 'Oriental' from the menu and we hunted around to find a place that was open and came up with Lucy Chang's.
There are four Lucy Chang restaurants in Belgium. The others are in Knokke, Braschaat and Brussels. They also offer a catering service for parties, weddings and other events.
We had no problem finding the restaurant as it's on Marnixplaats, just across fro
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[koshkha, 01/04/2010] Fiskebar is on Marnixplaats in Zuid Antwerp which Wikipedia reassures me is 'a currently fashionable area'. Marnixplaats has a whopping big statue of Neptune so where better for a fish restaurant to be located? I went with my colleague Marianne last week.
Getting in involved a brief tussle with the semicircular curtain that hangs just inside the door and I suspect the diners on the other side must have wondered what was going on. When we eventually burst through into the restaurant we found a small but busy dining room which was almost full even though it was barely 7.30 pm. To one side of
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[lumierre, 10/12/2009] The hostel is in a very dirty and ugly area of the city. 20 minutes walk from the central station, far from the center. The reception is not open 24 hours a day, actually there is no reception, but the owners sleeping in their dorms upstairs. No sign indicating the hostel, just a handwritten paper saying to call them on phone, if noone was there. What if coming from other country and have no phone active in Belgium? We have arrived at 9 pm in one of the 3 days stay, and having being not received any key, we had to wake up the family and the welcome, of course, was not nice. The vultures were
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[koshkha, 31/10/2009] Antwerp is a really tiny little airport and is located in a suburb of the city in a fairly built up area conveniently only a few miles from the centre of the city. It has been created to maximise the convenience of using it - something which sadly can no longer be said about most international airports these days.
I believe they have just 10 flights a day - to London City, Manchester and Frankfurt - though of course this is subject to change. What is less likely to change though is how easy and pleasant Antwerp airport is to fly from. Because it's small and quiet, everything seems to run ex
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[koshkha, 31/10/2009] Wok A Way is a small Belgian chain of fast food oriental restaurants attempting to fill a niche of 'better than BurgerKing' but with aspirations to be a sort of local Wagamama. It's been running since 1999 and it's fair to say it's not exactly taken over the world and it hasn't got everything right yet based on our experience. There are a couple of Wok A Way outlets in Antwerp and the one we visited was the South Antwerp branch on De Burburestraat , a rather upmarket and trendy area. I went there recently with a group of colleagues after a meeting at our factory in Antwerp and unfortunately no
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[koshkha, 05/04/2009] I have an on-going debate with my Belgian colleague Joep about who and what Belgium is famous for. We've done the 'Name 10 'famous' Belgians' challenge a dozen times and even tracked down the 'www.famousbelgians.net website to substantiate some of the names were weren't too sure about. We've tried to steer away from comments about child abuse but they sneak in now and then. One thing we both agree on is that it's easier to think of famous foodstuffs for which Belgian is renowned. There's the chocolate, the zillions of different beers, the outstanding national skills with chips and my favourite
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[koshkha, 31/12/2008] I'm lucky to have friends, Alex and Katya, who live in Antwerp and when I visit the city for work, I try to meet up with them to play with their very fine Persian cat and go out for dinner. They have been living there for a couple of years so by now they know where's worth a visit and I've not been disappointed with any of their choices. Just before Christmas we set out to find some dinner and Katya and I decided we wanted mussels. We strolled around the town centre until we found Het Vermoeide Model, checked the menu boards outside to confirm the presence of mussels and headed in.
Entering
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[koshkha, 24/12/2008] The Ramada in Antwerp is based in a rather striking mirrored building but delivers rather less than the sparkling exterior would suggest. I've stayed there several times and always come away thinking that just a little more effort could make this into a pretty nice hotel but I can't imagine that happening, mostly due to the rather lousy attitude of the staff.
Never a smile or a welcome.
On my most recent visit, I arrived by taxi from Brussels airport, squeezed myself and my wheelie-bag through the rotating door, was as always impressed by the nice looking lobby and then brought quickly
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