We needed to kill a night before heading to Mechelen. So we spent one night in Antwerp. Mainly to head to Wesmalle. So arrived at Antwerp, put our luggage in a locker and headed for the bus station outside.
It is about an hour long bus ride from Antwerp central. So, we hopped the bus and headed to the “Cafe Wesmalle”.
Now, we did not know exactly where it was, but there is a stop listed on bus schedule as “Westmalle.” So we figured we could hoof it to where the monastery was from the bus stop.
Well, the bus stop is in front of here. Right in front of the cafe which is across the street from the monastery. So we went in for a beer and a trappist cheese plate. They have the WestMalle Dubble on tap and the Triple in bottles. We had one of each and they do a half and half: Half dubble half triple. I am not normally a fan of half and half pours, but this was pretty tasty. So we had another.
We asked about getting into the monastery/brewery for a tour and were told we could go ring the bell and ask, but unless we had made arrangements in advance it was HIGHLY unlikely we would get in.
We decided to stroll down there anyway. It was a pleasant little walk but we were denied at the gate. I did get a couple of “spy shots” through the gate when they let in a delivery truck. :-). So we strolled back to the cafe and had another beer.
I noticed that we were, bar far, the youngest people in the cafe. Most of the people in the place were old enough to be our parents. Kind of odd. Perhaps we were there during “blue plate special” hours.
Fully beer logged we hopped on the bus back to town. We caught a quick snooze or two on the bus.
We then headed off to our hotel[which I remember nothing about].
The next day was a quick day. Kaddee had heard about this “gorgeous” pedestrian tunnel under the river that was decorated with all this art deco tile work.We found it. It was a straight, boring white tiled tunnet. The escalator down has some tiles. That was it. Oh well.
Onward to Mechelen.