While out with a friend recently and I said something to the effect of – “I have a story…” to which she replied, “of course you do…” and what can I say other than I have a thirty year career in an industry that has given me a gift. A gift of life experiences that can be shared by telling my stories. For me, every experience is an opportunity for a story to be shared.
To get my creative brain in motion I started a list. It didn’t start out to be an alphabet list, but it soon became just that. Some letters have many thoughts and ideas that spilled out into my journal. This could take a while. This could be the start of this book that everyone says I should write. Time will tell.
But for now, we start at letter A – for Antwerp, Belgium.
I had an incredible opporunity to be invited by a travel agent friend to go on Viking River Cruise on the Rhine starting in Amsterdam. I could have also started this project with my time in Amsterdam, but maybe that will be for round two.
River cruises are unique experiences that if you have had a chance in your lifetime to experience, you must. You get up close and personal to the most amazing cities in Europe and beyond. Docking almost always in the centre of the city or town and offering one included excursion at each port.
We left the ship for our walking tour. Each guest has their own headset and the tour guide walks ahead and gives you all that you need to know without you missing anything if you walk slower or like myself and a couple of the ladies I met were busy taking photographs of everything. My obsession the first time I went to Europe was balconies, and on this trip it was windows and doors.
There appeared to be a lot of arts and culture in Antwerp as well as I saw lots of posters promoting ballet, musical theatre and movies.
As we progressed on our walk, there was one thing that was pretty clear to myself and the ladies I was walking with, we were passing a lot of great food along the way. When the group tour finished and they were walking back to the ship, we decided the better way to spend the rest of our time in Antwerp was to…eat our way through. Which we did.
Our tour ended right near an outdoor street vendor selling dried fruit and nuts. Of course we wanted to take photos of his goods, so we ‘had’ to purchase some goods and then take photos.
Our next stop was to have “Friet met Mayonaise” – or in English, fries with mayo. I know that recently there have been new mayo and ketchup combos and people in North America think it is a strange combo, but in Holland and Belgium it is perfectly normal to dip your fries in mayo. This one chip stand had about 10 different kinds of dipping sauces. We wanted to try them all, but you had to pay for the paper cups per sauce. So…we put as many kinds as we could in one cup.
Belgians are known for…chocolate of course. Leonidas is a very large Belgian chocolate chain. The tour guide likened it to ‘the Starbucks’ of Belgian chocolate shops. When in Rome, or in this case, Belgium, eat and buy chocolate.
We could not leave our food tour of Antwerp with, you guessed it, waffles. We walked past the cutest little shop on our walking tour in the morning, but it wasn’t open at that time. On our way back to the ship, it was open and ready for us to sample delicious waffles with all the fixings. It did not disappoint.
When I look back on my river cruise experience, I will always remember my day in Antwerp. It was a great mix of history, arts, culture and of course food.
I hope that tempted your appetite for what comes next…letter B of course.
The Lisa Chronicles 