City Rating: Antwerp
Population: 520’000
Date of visit: June 2018
Attractions & sights: 2/5
Nightlife: 3/5
Safety: 4/5
Infrastructure: 4/5
Low budget factor: 3/5
Total: 👍👍👍/5
The city in a nutshell:
Antwerp is famous for diamonds, waffles, chocolate and beer. Belgium’s second city has a lovely old town, a nice harbour and is more beautiful than Brussels. It’s a nice city to spend one or two days, although there isn’t really much to do if you stay longer unless you like museums.
Where to stay:
The best option would be somewhere in old town, for example near Grote Markt or Onze-Lieve-Vrouwekathedraal. We stayed near the Central Station in Radisson Blu, which was OK but a 10 minute walk to/from old town.
The Good:
Antwerp has a beautiful medieval old town with nice old buildings, cobblestone streets and churches in Gothic style. It is a charming city centre with plenty of small alleys, bars and restaurant. Obviously, you have to try waffles, fries and beer when in Belgium. Antwerp’s city centre is the best place for that.
Antwerp has also several shopping districts. The shopping zone Meir, which leads you from the Central Station to old town, is not only full of shops with the most notable international brands, it is also one of the most beautiful shopping streets I have seen so far. The Rococo buildings are amazing.
Usually, railway stations are nothing special, but the Central Station in Antwerp is probably the best sight in the city. As most of the visitors arrive at the Central Station, it is almost impossible to miss this attraction.
By the way, Antwerp is very near to cities like Bruges and Gent or even to Dutch cities like Eindhoven or Amsterdam. The city can be used as a base therefore in order to visit other places on a day trip.
To summarize, the city is a good place to enjoy good food, beer, a nice old town and do some shopping. Moreover, Antwerp’s nightlife is also not the worst and you won’t get bored at night if going out is your thing.
The Bad & The Ugly:
Although the city is nice and beautiful, one full day is actually enough to see all of it unless you are a huge fan of museums (I’m not). I said to my friend I wouldn’t know what to do if we had another full day there. As I mentioned, there are some interesting cities near Antwerp, which can be visited if you get bored.
Another minus is that the area around the Central Station is really ugly. Fortunately, it doesn’t take longer than five minutes until you’re in the nicer parts of the city.
Something I haven’t seen anywhere in the world yet was that you have to pay to use the toilets in many bars and nightclubs, which is ridiculous and an impudence.
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