I’m in Antwerp (Antwerpen) on business which is a bit of a good news / bad news story. The good news is that the trip is partially subsidized. The bad news is that the people paying for the trip expect you to do some actual work. Like I say – good news / bad news. The past two days I’ve been working and Jan has been on her own. The only “sightseeing” was on my walk to the conference. Here is the Antwerp rail station on my way back from work.

But this evening I was finally finished and we headed out for dinner, only to discover that many restaurants in our part of town close early. Yikes! We were directed to the old town and eventually found a pleasant restaurant with outdoor seating. Even when you are directly facing a plain wall, you can still catch glimpses of interesting old buildings here.

After dinner we had a leisurely walk through the old city back to our hotel. There is so much interesting architecture here that it is hard to pick favourites, but here is a small selection.

Although Antwerp is filled with fascinating old architecture, there is an amazing amount of repair/restoration work underway. This picture of the cathedral nicely illustrates this.

You also see countless examples of old sculptures from Antwerp’s prime…

I’ll leave you with something much more modern, but very quixotic that fits perfectly within the Antwerp aesthetic.