Day 22: Rotterdam/Antwerpen

We leave our crowded festival-like camping for another day of travel.

Our first stop is Rotterdam, where we have about an hour and a half to visit before our next train. As we come out of the train station, there is an Indian man posing in front of the station, with his friend kneeling down to get the best angle of the not so amazing backdrop. I offer to do the same, but Mikel decides that today is not a modeling day. We obviously start our exploration in the Cool District, but soon discover that it is not so cool. Instead, we prefer to rest a bit in a park near the river to relieve our backs from our pretty heavy backpacks.

Next is Antwerp, with, in my non-engineer opinion, the most beautiful train station so far. The city is also very beautiful, we love the town center with the cute restaurants and the vines overcoming the facades. We head to the port to catch a view of the Scheldt river before deciding to taste the famous Belgian beer. We chose to go to Dr. Beer, a beautiful beer shop with hammock chairs inside, and decide to enjoy the sun out on the terrace. The manager, Dr. Beer himself, with his amazing beard and Dali-style 'stach serves us the best beers we have tasted in our whole lives. We fall in love with this place, and enjoy our beers while playing Mikado (which Mikel surprisingly wins).

We maybe enjoy the place too much, and realize that we don't have that much time to catch our train (as usual, we aren't the best to evaluate time) and make literally a run for it. My beer-filled belly doesn't enjoy the run that much, but we are also always lucky, and arrive 4 min before the train leaves.Read more