3 Days Antwerp.... Mini vacation, probably the only one for quite a while because it's just not the same without Mike. I had fun, but ... yeah. It doesn't feel right.... However, the city was wonderful, probably because it was shared with a good friend. He's been with me on this journey of mine, quietly lets me cry, talk, remenisce and vent, never shuts me up, although I'm pretty sure he's been wanting to, but he realises I need to talk through my days sometimes.... When we have plans, and I'm not having a good day, he leaves me be, and we just follow the plan, and eventually, I'll mellow out, or I don't, but somehow, it never interferes. It's nice that I don't have to pretend I'm having a great time, or I'm not sad because I miss Mike, or I'm freaking out because I don't know how to do this. He's just good company, quietly making me get out of the house under the guise of "I'm bored, wanna go do something?"
Aaaaan like with a zoo-visit, there's pictures :-) Not too many, you have to remember to bring your camera's batteries to get those... No pictures taken of the absolute caffeine-bomb... but my system still remembers, and craves, the caramel frappe we had daily, sometimes twice :-)
There's even a message for you "health nuts".... it's subtle though, you may miss it if you don't pay attention. I think I'll split them up by "event", so you can decide if you want ot see them or not :-)
The trip up, was just that... a trip. I have to give you a little bit of "background" on this whole traveling thing first.... My trainsubscribtion is for "off hours" meaning I can't travel with the discount until 9 in the morning and not between 16.00 an 18.30, So we planned on taking the train from Sittard at 9.17. Sofarsogood. However, I have to travel from our place to Heerlen, en from Heerlen to Sittard, about an hours travel. Not a big deal, but for me to use the discount, I have to have 45 minutes between the on- and off hour travel, otherwise, the whole trip is full fare.... Figuring out where I'm going with this? ROFL Yup, Left the house at 6.30, walked up to the station, took the train, made the connection, landed in Sittard at 7.55 and waited. (A later train wouldn't have had enough time in between) That wasn't so bad, actually, it wasn't warm yet, and there's benches to sit on 😎
We made the connection in Eindhoven, AND the one in Breda without a problem.... but the train had a bit of staying power problem as in not wanting to stay working :-) We sat in the middle of nowhere for about half hour, no airco, no windows to open and every couple of minutes we got an update. Really friendly like, but not incouraging. At one point, the conductor walked through our carriage and you could hear the control room over his radio, stating they had "smoking equipment".... Not what you want to hear when you're locked in said smoking train. We finally limped back to Breda station at a speed we were wondering weather we were being manually pushed, but we got there. The announcement came that the train that was supposed to leave10 minutes ago, was waiting for us at the station since we were blocking its track, appearantly and to get in and continue our journey... So we stood from Breda to Antwerp. ROFL. But... we got there, had our first cup of coffee at Starbucks. and just kinda got our bearings, before making our way down the street to the Chocolate museum.......
So not fair... you enter through the giift shop.... ROFL! You go through this room that's set up as a ship with bagsof chocolate beans. The only thing missing was the smell of chocolate :-)
So cool. Than you go through the process of making chocolate from the beans. nicely done, but pictures didn't do it justice.... so if you ever make it to Antwerp, go see for yourself. It's impressive. The museum trails you through the process of the very first chocolate makers outside of South America all the way up to the current big names in Belgian Chocolate makers. I was a little out of sorts at the time, so I missed a lot of information, but once I got into it more.... YEAH, definitely worth the price of admission :-)
After this intruduction you enter the nuts and bolts part of chocolate making, it showcases the molds, some of their current chocolates being made and packaged and a really fun true or false section, painted on the walls... and there's signs everywhere... If I had an actual kitchen, with a wall, I would definitely steal some of them 😂
There were throughout some very nice creations. It didn't state if they were special orders forsomething specific, or just something they made... but it was impressive. They also had a work area set up where you could tell they made special things, nothing that looked like it were bulk creations being made there.
