belgique

welcome to my belgium series.

i have so many pictures from antwerp, i just want to share them with you.

antwerp stole my heart immediately. when the first thing you see after getting off the train is this beauty you can see what i mean!

or is it just me?

the architecture there is odd but wonderful. every single building is different, on most streets you can see a mix of just every decade possible. new and old mix and match and you would think that it would look awful but surprisingly it works out great! i feel it gives it it's charm. i also heard that pretty much all of that part of europe looks a bit like that, how cool is this? i have so much to see...

i have no freaking idea what the street name was but i found this awesome cafe. first day i was just walking around, waiting for my hotel room, and i thought, what the heck, i might just go in and check this out.

the place is beautiful, kinda hip now that i think of it. they play great music, the lady is very nice. all the food is hand made right there, the sandwiches are even made just before your eyes. also they have a very interesting menu. i drank a soda with lavender and flower nectar and some berries. it was absolutely great.

moving on to hot dishes.

they are serious bout their french fries in belgium. and for a good reason.
i was thinking, how good can these be? what can be so freaking special?
i don't know the second answer but they can be really good. and this is the best sign for this.

the main market square with the freaking unesco building. i had to read the plate on there to know that. that's how well i was prepared for this trip, congrats to me.

they have a beautiful cathedral there, gothic with the originals of rubens paintings and colourful stained glass windows.

and look how well and how nicely it is lit. i've always had a problem with that, there are very few churches with nice lighting, appropriate chandeliers and all that. i think this behaves quite well... i might be slightly biased cause i'm utterly in love with bare lightbulbs aesthetic.

the whole main old city is traffic free, there are only occasional bikes but it's quite crowdy sometimes, streets are a bit narrow. look how beautiful:

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second day, since i went to my most wanted thing in the first day, more on that later, i kinda had a lot of time to do other stuff, as always.

as i'm a history of arts diploma student i felt the need to culture myself and follow rubens's footsteps. he lived in antwerp most of his life there. i visited his house, in part his biggest studio.

he slept upright!

there was a beautiful, really classic garden there, it was probably modified a few times since baroque but it still feels authentic.

let me know if you want more antwerp, i have a few more planned but it's been so long that maybe you want something new. 

don't worry, i'll still do the ''walkthrough'' on the birds of paradise exhibit. it was awesome.

sorry for being so late, my trusty macbook is getting old

love,

qofr

ps. socks coming up in like an hour