December 5th – Antwerp Diamond District / Special Tapas dinner!

December 5, 2012

Today was a great day for me. The chance to go the Antwerp Diamond District. All I cam remember is the JB Robinson Jewelers commercials saying Antwerp was the Diamond Capital of the World! So I was really excited. Never bought a “diamond” anything before; thought some would get bought for me in my life but that is not how it ever turned out. The same lesson, different day. I am the one who must take care of and/or make me happy1 It’s so exciting and fun and romantic to see my family and friends who get that sort of attention from their partner(s),, but it doesn’t always happen the same way for everyone. At any rate, bottom line, at 54 years old, I have diamond earrings that are LC which I believe stands for Loop Clear and supposed to be flawless quality. And they’re really pretty!

That’s really all we saw of Antwerp today. Lieve gave us a ride and it was a really neat drive to and from. On the way home we witnessed snowfall in Belgium and it was big huge wet snow flakes about the size of silver dollar coins! The was neat. I tried to take a picture of it through the car window, but I’m not sure it will show ver well!

Antwerp had some really pretty buildings too. Took some of the diamond district to include here and the big beautiful gilted building in the pics is the train station. Will be taking the train to Antwerp on Friday for a special dinner I’ve been lucky enough to be invited to and if I get a train their early enough, will go to the MAS art museum which is supposed to be spectacular. I’ve loved everything I’ve gone to and seen, but I’m running out of steam!!!! I need a rest! But you know you hate to waste time resting because you just doubt you’ll ever be lucky enough to be back. It’s taken me 54 years to get here in the first place!

Got to go to a really cool Tapas dinner. Tapas I believe means small plates. It wasn’t a full meal of courses but a series of seemingly never-ending small plates of various foods. Our first series of plates included Spanish rice and a cooked mushrooms dish and then a bunch of fish-type foods! We, quite wisely, didn’t ask first what we were eating and eventually found out that we ate squid, octopus, calamari, shrimp, and some other “untranslatable” fish croquets It was all really good! Don’t know if I’d be saying that if I knew ahead! The next series of plates were the “meat” ones. A lot of people simply refer to meat as meat; as opposed to calling it beef or chicken or whatever. It does make you wonder! We apparently ate pork cheek, “meat balls”, chicken on small bones, and suckling pig in a stew-like plate with garbanzo beans! I’m sure I’m leaving something out; and didn’t take pics of all of it, but did get pics of some of it!

Pat and I had a wonderful walk back. It had been cold and rainy and a bit nasty out and it was almost as if once mother nature knew we were going to walk back to the hotel (about a 20 minutes walk), the weather just stopped being icky! We had a really nice walk back and then I had homework to finish for my Nutrition class. I think I might just end up getting a B in this class so I didn’t want to lose any points unnecessarily by not having a few pieces of paperwork turned in! I also had some work to do for the office and just finished that now before settling down to write this. I need to be packing because my suitcases must be on the bus by 8:15am tomorrow morning. It’s only 7:24pm as I write this in Ohio time, but its already 1:24am, YIKES! Better get packing!