Visiting Antwerp, Belgium’s Home of Flemish and Dutch
Masterpiece Paintings with Juilliard Graduate Florence Paget and Savvy Mom Ruth Paget
My
husband Laurent and I bundled up Florence, put her in her car seat, and set out
for a weekend in Belgium on a cold, winter day in Paris, France.
The
destination I had in mind was Antwerp, Belgium to visit the Koninklijk
Museum. The famous Rubens paintings of
wealthy, corpulent women were being restored, but there were still galleries
full of paintings by Frans Hals, Rembrandt, Brueghel, and Memling to admire.
My
favorite painting by Abel Grimmers (1570 – 1619) was entitled Springtime. Springtime showed men planting gardens and
making their vegetable gardens tidy and lovely.
That
desire to beautify one’s surroundings was something I loved about the French,
Belgians, and Dutch. I liked making a
little vacation home for myself like the French still do in this way, too.
We
walked from the Museum to Antwerp’s Grande Place where we ate mussels with
French fries the way the Belgians do; you dunk the fries in mayonnaise.
That
combination sounds awful, but tastes great with canary-yellow, homemade
mayonnaise.
We
drank Trappist wheat beers made by monks with our meal.
After
dinner, we walked around the cold port and returned to Brussels for a good
night’s sleep before returning home to Paris the next day.
You
can take a TGV (French Speed Train) from Paris to Brussels (Belgium) as well.
I
love how you can go all over France and to Italy and Spain on those TGV trains.
By
Ruth Paget, Author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France
Click here for: Ruth Paget's Amazon Books
Click here for: Ruth Paget's Amazon Books
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