Adventures in Antwerp

On Sunday we journeyed to Antwerp to see the Royal De Luxe giant marionettes. The trains were crowded with teenagers returning from the Pukkelpop music festival and we nearly gave up before we started, but eventually we found seats on a very crowded train.

I had never been to Antwerp, but the park where the marionettes were that afternoon was in the opposite direction of most of the parts of Antwerp we might normally have visited. So I still need to go to explore Antwerp. We followed the people to find the right park - there were a lot of people! According to the news, 800,000 visited the marionettes during the three days they were in town.

The marionettes were amazingly detailed and a wonder to behold. We did not get to see them walk around or dance, as we got there in between the 2 parades. We did actually wait until 4 o'clock, even though the baby (and the husband for that matter) were getting tired and cranky by that point, but the parade did not start on time so we ended up leaving. But even just sitting and looking around they were fascinating. The Giant Little Girl was my favorite. She had a sweet, slightly sorrowful look about her. The Diver was a bit scary looking, reminiscent of Frankenstein. He did not have his diving helmet on while we were there.

The park where they were settled in the afternoon was pretty cool in and of itself. There were very neat fountains that had hundreds of children playing in them, and an enormous, tall, futuristic looking playground. There was a large exposition building with a craft fair going on. We bought Luna a knit hat for winter, and she was so cute in one of the hats we tried on her that the vendor asked permission to take her picture in it. We had hotdogs for lunch (not exactly the American hotdogs I'm used to, but not too bad) and fed Luna her veggies right there at the festival. Other than the occasional fussy time, she was great all day, despite being unable to get a good nap in. She doesn't mind interruptions to her routine at all.

We were all exhausted by the end of the day, but it was definitely a fun day!

All the pictures and video we took are here, but I encourage you to check out the videos of them in action I found on YouTube here, here, and here.