Antwerpen: Diamond Capital of the World

Tuesday, January 8, 2008

Today Pieter and Sofie picked us up an hour earlier to catch the train to Antwerp where we were planning to meet up with Marc, Bonnie and Jamin. It happened that their train was late so at our connection we were able to get on their train and ride the rest of the way with them. The day was spent taking crazy pictures of the group and with LeAnne and Nat gazing longingly at the hundreds of diamond shops along the way. Unfortunately, no Belgian boys appeared with proposals. If you do happen to own a diamond, it was probably cut in Antwerp because 50% of the world's diamonds are.

We also had our first REAL Belgian waffles and they are AMAZING!! The concept is kind of like the Krispy Kreme donut...the first time someone told me about them I thought, "don't all donuts taste the same? How could Krispy Kreme's really be THAT much better, really?" But when I had one...WOW!! I WAS HOOKED!! So it's the same with Belgian waffles, they are much better than I can describe. You'll just have to try one for yourself! And get the hot fresh ones with sugar on them, they really are the best. They try to tempt you with chocolate and other stuff but don't fall for it. Only get the plain ones. We didn't get much shopping done but it was great just looking around the town and hanging with the Debu's. We had lunch at an Italian pizza place and each had our own pizza! I think I may have had more than one seeing as how I ate parts of other people's too. *sigh* I'm afraid it's going to take more than a treadmill for me when we get back. Luc and Annie invited us over for dinner again that night and Annie had kindly gone to the grocery store to fill our Belgian chocolate orders. Unfortunately they were out of the ones we all wanted to bring back to you folks at home but she found some other ones that promise to be good too!! After all, is chocolate EVER bad???!! We also spend the last night at their house seeing as we had to get up early and catch the train for....ENGLAND!!!

Char