Our trip is nearly finished and we have one more day of exploring. Today, we are in Antwerp, Belgium. We have a leisurely morning since our tour isn’t until 2:15pm. I like this aspect of our river cruise. We spend the mornings sailing and arrive to ports in the afternoon. We sleep in and take our time. It feel much more like vacation than when there are early tours or early arrivals.
The day started with breakfast and we make it again today because it goes until 9:30am. After breakfast, we return to our cabin. Our luggage is pulled out from under the bed and placed on top so that we can pack. I guess they’re kicking us off soon!
There are two tours available for today. One is a chocolate tour and the other a culinary tour. I was ready to signup for the chocolate tour until I realized that the culinary tour also involved chocolate. It was a 25 minute walk with our guide to our first food stop. Here we had fries. They had several sauces and despite being the “small” fries, it was huge. There was a little excerpt on the wall. It said that Americans call them “French fries” likely because of an encounter during World War I. Belgium soldiers speak French and likely Belgium soldiers shared their fries with American soldiers and the Americans mistakenly thought they were French because of the language.
Our second stop was for waffles. It was a busy restaurant and I was worried how we would all fit. There was an upstairs just for us. The waffles were full sized and topped with whipped cream. There is a lot of food on this tour! We then visit a chocolate shop where we can see them make the chocolate and finish with a cookie shop. I was really excited about having Belgium chocolate. I’ve been so spoiled this week because every night there is chocolate in our room for bedtime. It has been an amazing assortment of chocolates this week. The chocolate on the tour would normally be pretty great, but compared to what we’ve been having on the ship, it was a bit of a disappointment.
The shops is Belgium have umbrella holders outside of them where you can leave your wet umbrellas while you shop. I didn’t notice these, but our tour guide used one outside of the chocolate shop for his umbrella. I didn’t see him put it in there, but I was next to him when we left. Someone stole his umbrella!
There was a 50% chance of rain today, but it was raining for our whole tour. I wouldn’t call the rain amount 50% at all! Overall, we’ve had excellent weather for this trip. I was prepared for cold and rain every day, but most days were pretty nice. It rained my first day in Amsterdam and my last day here in Belgium. It’s a nice way to ease in and out of vacation.
We had an option of walking back to the ship or taking the Riverside bus. Yesterday, I was going to walk to spend more time in the city. Today, we rode the bus. I think everyone was on the bus!
We spent the last meal onboard with friends we’ve made. I stayed on Tauck for the expo and met two other agents there. We then found out we were all moving to Riverside Luxury Cruises so we spent a decent amount of time together. We’ve met a lot of great people on this sailing. The President of Riverside sailed with us the whole time and the owner came on the last day too. There are a lot of great people behind this company.
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