Photos from Antwerp!

I'm far too tired to explain these tonight, but I've given most of them explanatory titles and descriptions: Photos from Antwerp!.

Yesterday we went to Onze Lieve Vrouwekathedraal, the oldest Gothic church in Belgium, in Antwerp's Old Town centre. Even the spikes have spikes and spinities! We couldn't take any photos inside because it's not allowed. In the evening we went to Open-air Museum for Sculpture at Middelheim (Openluchtmuseum voor Beeldhouwkunst Middelheim). A few km south of Antwerp city centre, this huge free museum has around 300 sculptures set in parkland. The park keepers ride around on bicycles, but I'm not sure whether the general public is allowed to as well (there's lots of bicycle parking outside, anyway). In June and July it's open Tuesday-Sunday until 9 pm, making it the ideal evening entertainment if you're not too tired from looking at other things. Take the no. 7 or 15 tram followed by a 15 minute walk; or the 27, 32 & 33 bus followed by a 7 minute walk; or the 21 or 33 bus followed by a 5 minute walk. There are both permanent and temporary exhibits - the current exhibition is called Long Live Sculpture! and features lots of surreal artwork.

Today we went to the Diamond Museum of the Province of Antwerp - almost next to the Centraal Station. ( Things I learned today about diamonds... )

Later in the afternoon we went to Antwerp zoo, and in the evening we went for dinner at Ilha Formosa - the only real vegetarian restaurant in Antwerp- all the others are snackbars. There were lots of vegan options on the menu. I had a sweetcorn soup (basically just creamed sweetcorn with vegetable stock) followed by fried soya strips with peppers in black bean sauce and banana fritters. Richard had spring rolls and soya steak in black pepper sauce. Everything was very, very good. Unfortunately, they're only open from 18:15 to 20:30, so you have to get there quickly if you want to eat there!

OK, going to bed now.

Museum Plantin-Moretus

I posted all my Photos from Belgium, and I wrote about two days in Antwerp - but not about what we did on the third day. This is because I wanted the people receiving postcards to be getting a sneak exclusive about the day, and so didn't want to post the entry I'd written until they had their cards. As all the postcards have arrived, here's what we did on Friday 30th June.

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Today we visited the Museum Plantin-Moretus, which is a printing and typography museum. It is an old house that contained a printing and publishing business from 1555 until the early 1800s. It passed through ten generations of the same family, always being inherited by the son (or stepson or son-in-law) who showed the most ability - and as it was held within the same family and on the same location, all of the archives were kept intact. Also, when the Industrial Revolution started, the family decided they no longer wanted to compete with the new way of doing things, so did not bother to update their equipment - and as a result, the workshops are preserved as they would have been at the end of the 18th Century.

This museum is a must-see for anyone who cares about books. Honestly, I would recommend actively going out of your way to visit Antwerp to see it. Although it's physically quite small, we spent over 4 hours there looking round. They have three libraries and archives including 25,000 old books, maps and manuscripts, many from the early years of printing. A few hundred of these books are on display in hermetically-sealed cases to protect them from light and moisture. The workshops include the oldest intact printing presses in the world, dating from the 16th Century, as well as four 17th Century printing presses that are still in good working order (!). You can see the foundry, where typefaces were made, and downstairs in the print room you can see some of the 90 fonts collected by the family. There are demonstration videos of carving and casting letters for fonts, of producing woodcuts and copper plates for illustration, and book binding. There's a reconstruction video to show you the entire chain of book production as it would have been in the 17th Century, including the two vital proof reading stages. Some old proofs are on display, and you can see the (now faded) red ink and marks that are still familiar to anyone who proof-reads today. ( Read more... )

Note to Self re thesims2.com

Dear h-l,

For future reference, your password for The Sims 2 site is the password you'd expect it to be, minus the HYPHEN, as the EA site doesn't let you have punctuation in passwords even though that's the normal way of obfuscating them for security porpoises. Don't waste another 15 minutes of your life trying every single variant of the password. Bah.

Anyway, having found the correct variant to enter the site, I've just posted a new chapter of my evil Ethiopian Challenge story online at the Sims 2 Exchange: Tormented Family Chapter 4 - Profoundly Gets His Man! In which the founder's son, Profoundly Tormented, grows up and picks his partner, and the third generation of Tormented sims are brought into the world. It is very, very silly - as might be expected for any Sims challenge where you're not allowed a kitchen or bathroom or any electrical appliances in the house, yet somehow you have to keep the sims alive and happy. It takes me forever to play this family because I'm always running someone or other Downtown so they can use the facilities - but taking chances is so, so fun ;)

Enjoy! A non-Exchange version will be posted when I get home & have sufficient motivation to do so. But it seems the Exchange isn't being the laggiest thing ever in the history of the universe tonight (at least, I'm seeing it fine even though I'm connected through slow hotel wifi), so you might actually be able to read the story even though it's there.