My trip to Belgium, part 2: Antwerp

The day after we went to Bruges, we headed on toward Antwerp. Can you find Antwerp on a map of Belgium? Like Bruges, Antwerp was a big commercial centre. Here, merchants traded everything from American sugar to South American diamonds. In fact, Antwerp is still a major port today. Ships can sail to Antwerp up the Scheldt River. Can you find on a map what sea the Scheldt flows into? Hint: it's the same sea I told you about when I took my trip to Scotland many months ago.

Here are some photos of me scouting out some of Antwerp's old buildings.

Here I am sitting on the window ledge of a beautiful old building in Antwerp.

Here's a closer view of me on that building.

One of the things that merchants brought to Antwerp was a very old manuscript which had been written at England in the 10th century. Alison is a historian who is doing research on this manuscript, which is why she wanted to go to Belgium in the first place. This manuscript was bought by Plantin-Moretus printing house, a place where lots of books were made. Mr. Plantin and Mr. Moretus were very interested in old scripts, which they would use to make fonts. The Plantin-Moretus Printing House has been preserved and turned into a museum. Here are some pictures of the old printing presses. Printing was a huge development in Western history starting in the 15th century (although in the Far East, some forms of printing had already existed for many centuries). Before people started printing books, all books had to be written by hand, which took an extremely long time.

Printing presses in the museum at the old Plantin-Moretus Printing House.

As a result of all this trade and business, Antwerp, like Bruges, became very rich. Here is the very elaborate Gothic cathedral in the heart of Antwerp; its spire is the tallest in the region. The cathedral is Catholic, but other religious groups also live in Antwerp. In particular, there is a large Orthodox Jewish community in Antwerp. We saw lots of men wearing black hats and black coats called kapote.

Antwerp's Gothic cathedral.

All the commercial activity in this region meant that this region developed big cities much faster than other places in Europe. When we went to the Musée de Cinquantenaire in Brussels, the capital of Belgium, however, we learned that the world's very first cities had developed much earlier. In the museum, we saw artifacts from the great ancient cities of Mesopotamia, Egypt, the Roman Empire, and the Incan Empire. Duncan was particularly excited to see the Incan exhibit, because one of the Incan statues inspired one of his favorite stories--Tintin’s adventure with The Broken Ear. The author of the Tintin stories, Hergé, was a Belgian from Brussels who often visited this museum. Have you ever read any of the Tintin books? I think that you would like them a lot.

The Incan statue that inspired Duncan's favorite Tintin story.

All in all, I really enjoyed learning a lot of history and eating a lot of chocolate, fries, and mussels while in Belgium. I'm very grateful to Alison and Duncan for showing me so many places in Belgium.

Alison holds me above a canal in Bruges so that I don't get blown into the water.