Country 1: Belgium; Castle 3: Het Steen

So...our car has been delayed. We hope to get it in the next week. Instead of sticking around Amstelveen, we decided to do a quick trip to Antwerp. We took the train yesterday morning and came back tonight.

The highlight of the trip was all of the amazing food. We did a chocolate tour where we got to try all kinds of different Belgian chocolates. Our favorites were by Pierre Marcolini. Alex got to grind some cocoa beans.

And there was a device that let us snort chocolate powder. Apparently it was originally made for Keith Richards to snort a different kind of powder.

Last night we had a delicious Flemish dinner of rabbit stew and baked camembert cheese. Today we went to the House of Waffles. Mike and Alex had sweet waffles and I had a ham and cheese waffle. We're not sure how much of Alex's waffle ended up in his mouth compared to all over his face!

We also enjoyed seeing the tunnel that goes under the river. Alex spent a bunch of time going up and down the escalators. It is a .5km route under the river. We figure we'll bring him back to Antwerp before cross country season starts so he can do some practice runs under the river.

The castle in Antwerp is called Het Steen. Unfortunately, they had completely redone the inside of the castle to make it an interactive exhibit about Antwerp, so it wasn't very castle-like inside. Something of a disappointment, but we still count it as the third castle on our trip. The statue of the guy peeing on the other guys is actually a myth about a giant that roams the town at night to punish children and drunkards (not by peeing on them we don't think).

And this is Mike's favorite picture of Antwerp.