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I was actually really struggling to figure out where to go after Brussels. There were a couple of places in Belgium to go. The other options were up to the Netherlands or across to Germany. Part of what ended up making my decision was that it was the weekend and Antwerp had some of the cheapest accommodation I could find.
It worked out to be a pretty good choice. While there wasn't exactly heaps to do in Antwerp it was a pretty nice town and I had a good time there with some of the people I met at the hostel. The hostel itself was located in the Jewish quarter which was rather interesting. This wasn't like the old Jewish quarters that I've visited in a thousand old towns before, this was one where they still lived there. And they were all proper orthodox Jews all dress in black with the funny hats and curly chops down to their shoulders. Even the little kids like 5 years old had the craziest chops. Bizarre fashion sense. Also apparently part of their religion (on top of the not turning stuff on on the Sabbath etc) is that if they drop their hat or having it knocked of their head they can't pick it up themselves. They need to get someone else to do it. I'm not sure of the actual truth of this however and we never tested it.
The main attraction of the town itself was the cathedral which only had one and half towers because they never got around to finishing the second. The funny thing was that they put like a little spire on top anyway, which just looked ridiculous. I saw on the map that there was a castle along the river. This turned out to not really be much of a castle at all. I'd barely even call it a fort or tower. It's currently some crappy maritime museum or something. I didn't even bother with it. There was also a building near the cathedral with a bunch of flags over each window. Probably some kinda townhall or something. One thing that stuck out to me was that they had the New Zealand flag but not the Australian one. Not really sure how they chose which flags to show.
The town also had a pedestrian tunnel running under the river which if I recall was built in something like the 20s or 30s. To get down to the tunnel you can take a lift, or even better you can take the original escalators... which are made out of wood. Really cool. Never seen a wooden escalator before. The tunnel itself is pretty crazy long, takes a good 10 or 15 minutes to walk through it. Once on the other side though the only thing really of any interest is the view back over the other side. So I basically took a couple of photos and then walked back.
I had one night out with a few girls I met at the hostel. We had planned to go to a bar/club located somewhere around the red light district (of which I hadn't realised Antwerp had one). After walking through the red light district and not finding it and then asking someone and having them tell us it was back in there and walking back through only to again not find it we asked someone else who again told us it was back in the way we came. Eventually after walking up and down the red light district half a dozen times we found it only to find it had a 15euro cover charge so we said f*** it, and went to a pub. We ended up going through about 3 pubs all of which were pretty good. It was about 6am by the time we went to bed.
The decision of where to go next was basically made by one of the girls I was hanging out with who went to Amsterdam. I figured this was as good a time as any to head there, and this way I'd already know someone to hang out with. So to Amsterdam it was.
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