Monday, 3 April, Antwerp: flavors

Written 28 May 2023

The squeegee guys must have been out early, because the windows are sparkling.

Across the way is the Viking Ve, facing the same way we are but moored on the opposite bank, the other long side of the rectangular basin.

As we trooped off the ship to board the buses for the short trip to the center of town, we could sight down the long axis of the basin for view of the spectacular diamond-shaped modern addition to Harbor House, the control center for the port. (As the guide told us, 80% of the world's diamonds pass through Antwerp, and 50% of the cut ones, so diamonds are a major theme. Unfortunately, in my photo it's too small to be properly visible in the size I could display it here. Just Google "harbor house antwerp" for good images of it.

Here's a much nearer view of the older, traditional side, which we drove by on the way into town. It used to be the port's fire station before being converted to the harbormaster's use.

At the right is the red brick Museum aan de Stroom, the museum on the stream, a new, interactive sort of museum that appeals especially to kids and is surrounded by water on three sides. It has elevators, but last night, Program Director Dominic especially recommended its escalators, which go round and round the square, past the spectacular views, turning 90 at each corner, spiralling up to the top. Unfortunately, we didn't get to go—it wasn't on any of the tours, and we didn't have time to go independently. Too bad, as Dominic says there's a Michelin-starred restaurant inside.

At the tourist-bus parking lot, where we were dropped off, we encounted this formidable-looking tower. The bridge to its upper floor leads to a bright orange-and-white freestanding elevator shaft emblazoned "River Cafe Seafood Restaurant," but that's aparently not open yet.

Just behind the tower and the bus is the River Scheldt (you can see a wooden mast sticking up over the top of the mast), but to the left of the photo, running several blocks along the riverfront, is a long line of covered but open-sided pavillions. They once served to shelter cargo being unloaded from ships on the river, but there's presently under restoration as an open-air market. The Scheldt is a tidal river, and it's now rising higher than it used to because of global warming, so they're also raising the quays.

After paralleling the pavillions on foot for a good ways, we turned away from the river and into the middle of old Antwerp. The whiteish house on the corner in the right-hand photo is on the corner of Koolkaai (which means "cabbage harbor"), the little street just to the right of it. When it was built in the 19th century (note the characteristically 19th-century stepped gable) it was right on the water, because at the time, Koolkaai was actually a canal, the one where cabbages and other produce were unloaded and sold. "Vliet" means "canal" (very different from the Dutch "gracht"), and "kaai" is "dock" (cognate with "quay"). Lots of the streets include these words in their names.

The blue-and-white plaque by its door means it's a protected building. The owner can alter the interior decor but cannot remove walls or touch the exterior.

This historic photo shows Koolkaai as it was when it was still a short canal projecting into the town. The whiteish house is just out of the frame, to the left.

Antwerp once had about 18 km of canals running into and through the city, but whereas Amsterdam cleaned up and kepts its canals, Antwer has covered them over and made them into streets. They didn't fill them in, just roofed them. It was, in fact, Napoleon who visited Antwerp at the beginning of the 19th century, found it smelly because of all the polluted canals, and said they needed to cover them. Today, you can visit them—the entrance is on Koolkaai. There you buy a ticket and borrow a slicker and Wellington boots from their large collection. Water still flows through the canals, but it's now confined within pipes. The tour is still, we were told, smelly and muddy. We and our fellow passengers did not go.

Because the water is now treated before it flows back into the river, fish and eels have returned to the Scheldt.

The streets we walked were all painted with these large colorful markings, which the guide told us indicate indicate speed limits, approaching intersections and squares, etc. I guess that way, they don't have to clutter the place with a lot of small street signs. The city's speed limit is 30 km/hr unless otherwise posted.

Continuing toward the central square, we passed St. Paul's church (which I didn't get a photo of, because we were too close); it burned down in 1986 but has been pretty much completely restored. We also passed through the old cattle market, now a charming little square with a basketball court in it. Outside someone's door, on the stoop, was this handsome pot of Gaultheria procumbens, American wintergreen or eastern teaberry, in the blueberry/cranberry family.

We also walked through Vleeshouwer (i.e. flesh-hewer, i.e. meat-cutter) Street to the 1501 meat hall, the butches' guild hall. As usual, I couldn't back up quite far enough to get all of it into the shot. It's where animals were slaughtered to supply the city with meat, and by design it was built uphill of the river. The slope down to the Scheldt is called "blood mountain," because all the runoff from the butchering operation had to flow down its central gutter to drain into the river. The building is red brick striped with (expensive and therefore prestigious) French sandstone; the local joke is that it looks like bacon. The butchering operation has long since been moved elsewhere, but the building has been repurposed as a museum of modern music and sound.

In September of 1944, the area just around the corner from the meat hall was bombed flat. It was left in that state until the 1970's, when it was rebuilt in a modern style that was intended to evoke medieval skylines, for example keeping the style of gables end-on to the street, called "saddle roofs." These buildings are now all "social living," that is, low-rent housing. Underfoot, small granite paving stones mark streets as they were in medieval times, in contrast to modern streets with larger stones are macadam.

The Scheldt runs north and crosses the border just before it widens out as it approaches the North Sea, so most of its estuary is in the Netherlands. According to our guide, in 1565, at the beginning of the 80 years' war, the Dutch blocked the river, trying to the keep the Spanish out of Antwerp, and it stayed blocked until 1863! Needless to say, Antwerp's shipping business wasn't doing very well. In 1863, the city bought the river back from the Dutch, and trade soon boomed again.

Written 29 May 2023

Soon, we came to the Grote Markt (the great market square), which is also called the town-hall square. A film crew was set up, but I don't know what they were shooting; we just toured around them. Perhaps it was something to do with the Tour of Flanders bike race, which we were told started yesterday. To our left as we emerged from the side street into the open space was this line of old guild halls, which have been repurposed since. For example, the tall one in the center of the photo, the one with the flags, is the Dutch embassy.

The buildings originally dated from the 16th century, but they've been rebuilt since. For example, the one housing the pub where we had our first tasting of the day shows the date 1574 right below the gilded angel on top, but a little lower down it shows 1900, the date when it was rebuilt. The gilded figures crowning the buildings serve as their street addresses, as gablestones did for private houses. The building three doors to the right of the embassy, rebuilt in the early 20th century, housed a pub called the Fox, so they topped it with a gilded fox.

To our right, at right angles to the embassy and its neighbors, is the Town Hall itself. Earlier town halls had been of cheaper wood, but this one was constructed of stone in 1565. At one point (I thought the guide said 18th century, but the only reference I can find elsewhere said 1576, despite the blockage of the river) the Spanish came into town and burned the city hall. Fortunately, only the inside burned, so it was refurbished, still in the Renaissance style. The guilds had to lend the city the money to build the town hall; those whose halls faced on the square stepped right up, but the ones behind the building site refused—the new building going to block their guild halls off from the square.

The floor with the flags (European 1st floor, American 2nd) was called the "nice" or "beautiful" floor—the most formal and decorative. Wedding parties used to stand on the balcony and wave to family and friends, but from about the 19th century, wedding parties walked right out of city hall and over to Den Engel ("our" pub) to have a drink.

Probably the most noticeable feature of the square is shown in the right-hand photo—the statue of Brabo. Ordinarily, it's a fountain, functioning from April to November, but it's currently turned off and surrounded by fencing for construction. Legend says that, back in Roman times, a cruel giant named Antigoon bestrode the Scheldt at Antwerp and, whenever a ship approached, stuck his hand down to collect an extortionate toll. If the captain refused, Antigoon cut his hand off and threw it into the river. Finally, a brave Roman soldier named Brabo set out to rid the city of this scourge. He stood on the bow of a ship with his trusty sword, and when Antigoon bent down to demand his toll, Brabo stabbed him in the side, then sliced his hand off and flung it into the river. The statue shows Brabo, (un)clad like a Greek athlete rather than dressed as a Roman soldier, in the act of throwing, while Antigoon lies moaning at his feet. The punch line is that the Belgian name of Antwerp, "Antwerpen," is a homonym of "hand throwing," and legend would have us believe that's how the city got its name. Right.

At the left here is a different view of the statue, showing the giant hand about to be flung.

At at the right is a city worker with a handy device called a "Glutton" busily picking up multicolored tissue-paper confetti left over from a recent wedding in the town hall. A passing toddler picked up a piece of it and ceremoniously presented it to me before running back to her strolling parents.

When we chose our excursion for the day, we opted for "Flavors of Antwerp" over the plain city walking tour, the city bicycle tour, and the synagogue visit. It was supposed to be a sort of progressive lunch during which we would sample a number of the city's iconic foods. As it turns out, our tour included the plain city walking tour as well as the food, so we got both.

In the photo above of the guild halls, the building two doors to the left of the Dutch embassy—it's cut off by the edge of the photo, but you can see the gilded angel at the top—on the corner of the side street where we entered the square, has always been called the Angel, and the long-established "café," really more of a pub (it has 8 beers on tap also serves spirits, but doesn't really do food), on its ground floor is therefore called "Den Engel," "The Angel." It looks unpreposessing on the outside but is considered a city institution. Inside it has the requisite low-ceiling, dark wood, battered table look of a real pub. It's clock is always set at 11:55, because locally "It's 5 to 12" means "time's almost up; it's time to go ahead and do it." Den Engel is where we had our first tasting of the tour. It was only 11 am, but as our guide said, "In Antwerp, we are Burgundians, we start with beer."

In the right-hand photo is one of the coasters on our table, advertising Duvel, a very popular Belgian beer, though not one of the ones our group tasted. It's actually lying flat on a table, not stuck on a wall, but it was sideways to the camera, so I rotated the photo to show the image right side up. It says "Love Nature" and features a fox, several kinds of birds and insects, a snail, and (in the center) a starling tipping his top hat.

Two of us were not beer drinkers, so they made her a coffee and me a hot chocolate, each of which came with a chocolate-topped cookie.

In the right-hand photo are the three beers offered for tasting.

Almost the first thing we were told is that each and every Belgian beer is always served in its very own custom-designed glass. Pubs that don't bother sometimes get sued by breweries. And the second thing we saw was that these beers were not, in fact, served in the right glasses. What can you say?

Anyway, the first beer offered (on the left in the photo) was Bolleke, made by De Koninck right here in Antwerp. "Bolleke" means "sphere," and its glass is round. We were showed an empty one, though the beer was served in a plain glass. It's an APA, an Antwerp pale ale—its wort is cooked a little longer than some, to caramelize, lending a deeper amber color to the beer. It's considered a "regular" beer, about 5.2%.

The guide told us that, in the 16th century, a brilliant architect (whom he did not name but who might have been either Domien de Waghemakere or Rombout Keldermans) built a new, wider wall around the city, tripling its area. In those days, the city's drinking water came from the canals (and remember that everything, including the sewers and the waste from the meat hall, drained into them). But just outside the walls, the genius architect found a sweet clean spring, and he constructed a system to pipe the water into the koolkaai for the brewers, accounting for the very high quality of the local beer. Eventually, it was piped directly to the various breweries, and what had been the south canal became the brewers' canal. He said that today, Antwerp still has two breweries, one of which is De Koninck.

The second beer was a cherry kriek, the bright red one. It's 5.5%. Belgium is known for these strange fruit beers, fermented with fruit (in this case roasted sour cherries) right in there with the barley wort. Some consider it a "ladies' beer," and some detest it, but it continues to be popular. The brewers are now promoting cherry kriek with lime over ice in an old-fashioned glass as a summer drink.

The third beer was La Chouffe, from Brasserie d'Achouffe, in French Belgium. It was a "triple," at 8.5%, and was priminently flavored with coriander. Its custom glass, which we were shown an empty example of, is painted with a cartoon gnome, who is apparently the symbol of the brewery. His name is Marcel, and his gnome colleagues (who symbolize the brewery's other flavors) are Malcolm, Matthew, and Micheline. You can read all about them at https://chouffe.com/en-us/marcel-co/dwarfsfamily/.

The guide continued with a lecture on Belgian beer in general. He said the "regular" beers sold around here are 7 or 7.5%. Seven of the 9 Trappist Abbeys are in Belgium, and Abbey beers go up to 8.5 or 9%. Delirium, whose logo is a pink elephant, is 12%!

Duvel ("Devil"), which is popular among the Flemish, is 6.5 to 7%. It's is served in a hour-glass-shaped glass with a little doohicky in the bottom that makes it produce a continuous, decorative stream of bubbles in the center. Duvel also produced "Duvel 666," which Den Engel has on tap. It's apparently so cloudy you can't see through it.

Many Belgian "beer cafés operate around the world, but there's only one in the U.S. To be an official Belgian beer café, you have to serve only Belgian beers, and U.S. law pretty well precludes that. In the U.S., you can't sign a long-term contract with a supplier.

After the beer tasting, we continued our walking tour, and the guide led us through the only medieval alleyway remaining in the city. That's David's back and white Tilley hat in the middle of the left-hand photo. The alley branches several times and opens out into a little courtyard at one point. I was frustrated that all the gnarled old vines climbing the walls hadn't leafed out enough yet to reveal their identities. Picture This identified one as a "blue rain vine" and another as Boston ivy, but I'm not sure I trust its ID's based only on bark and leaf scars. In the courtyard, though, a small tree had young leaves, and I'm inclined to believe it was really a golden rain tree (Koelreuteria paniculata); that should be gorgeous when it's in bloom.

Opening off the alleyway is a restaurant named Anthony van Dyke, after Rubens's favorite student. The guide says it recently lost its Michelin star because the chef retired. Michelin always makes a new chef earn his own. The guide also pointed out other points of interest—e.g., bulkhead doors once used to pour coal into cellars for storage and a door with a keyhole designed with a sort of funnel of ridges that would help direct the key into the hole, even in the dark or if the weilder had been drinking.

We emerged from the other end of the alleyway near the restaurant where we had our main course. I think it was called Balto's. As the guide again pointed out, "We're Burgundians, so the city center is all about eating and drinking. In the left-hand photo is my dish of stoofvlees, Flemish stew of beef, onions, and dark beer. (This is the dish you're supposed to eat at the Ghent festival, ladeled over fries and topped with mayonnaise in a paper bowl. You eat it while walking around from music venue to music venue. See my travel diary of 17 July 2010.) It came with a nice side salad and a huge bowl of fries for each two people to share. They brought mayo for the fries without even being asked!

Outside an adjacent restaurant was a big sandwich sign advertising mussels with fries. I remarked to the guide that I was a little disappointed that we hadn't gotten mussels for lunch. He said, certainly not! These mussels are for tourists. Real Belgians eat Mussels only in the summer, when they are bottom cultured and therefore much larger and sweeter. In the winter they grow in hanging culture, and real mussel lovers don't think they're worth eating.

He also told us about the history of "French" fries. We've all been told, of course, that they are not really French but originated in Belgium. The guide told us more—that they in fact originated in the 19th century, and specifically in Dinant (home of the saxophone! See my travel diaries for 10 July and 11 July 2010 for more about Dinant).

It seems that the people of Dinant, when food was scarce, fished the Maas for tiny fish, fried them, and gave them to the children, who considered them a treat. But in really bad winters, when the Maas frozen over and they couldn't fish, they cut potatoes into slender, vaguely fishy shapes and fried those as a substitute. Some army or other, which had French officers, passed through, really liked the fries, and took the recipe with them to spread far and wide. Because people got the recipe from French speakers, they called them French fries. Dinant! Who knew?!

From Balto's, we walked on toward dessert, passing on the way a shop displaying these large, colorful plastic (fiberglass?) bulldogs. I laughingly pointed them out to David, but he just looked blank. That's why I keep these travel diaries, so that I remember, even if he doesn't, things like the giant red bulldog outside the country hotel near Ghent where we had the Meiofauna Congress banquet in 2010. I don't know whether they're popular all over Belgium or whether it showed that the hotel owner had visited Antwerp.

We also passed a long rack of those subscription rental bikes so popular all over Europe.

Dessert was at a chocolate shop called "ChoFleur"—I'm not sure whether that was intended as a pun on "chauffeur" or on "cauliflower" or none of the above. Anyway, the chocolates were exquisite. We got two each—I chose a coffee one and a hazelnut one.

Unfortunately, the chocolatier who was supposed to do our presentation was stuck in traffic and couldn't get there before we had to leave, but his assistant did her best, explaining that chocolates could be based on water or fruit, which produces a product with a shorter shelf life, or on butter or nuts, which last longer.

They make the first kind in small batches of 150–200 pieces, so that they sell out before going stale, but make much larger batches of the longer-lasting ones.

As you can see at the left here, they also make chocolate hands in a range of flavors, and they even sold hand-shaped butter cookies. I don't know whether they make those on the premises or buy them elsewhere and repackage them under their own name. I'm told other places make marzipan candy hands.

A chocolate fountain hummed quietly to itself in a corner, gushing milk chocolate.

On the way to our next course (digestif), we passed through the square in front of the cathedral, which has apparently been covered with covered with scaffolding for six years for sand blasting but was at last uncovered in November—they have to clean it every few hundred years.

At the left is part of the cathedral façade. It's dedicated to the Virgin Mary, who is also the patron saint of the city. As a result, here in Antwerp, Mother's Day is celebrated on August 15, St. Mary's Day.

At the right is the famous statue of Nello and his dog Patrasche, which is, we were assured, the most photographed object in Belgium. They are characters from an 1872 book by Ouida (pseudonym of the English novelist Maria Louise Ramé) entitled A Dog of Flanders. The author visited Antwerp and was deeply affected by the cruel treatment of animals and of the poor that she saw there. The book is about the trials and tribulations of a homeless boy named Nello and the badly beaten dog he adopts and nurses back to health. Nello aspires to be a painter but can't make any money at it, and he longs above all to see the Rubens paintings in the cathedral, but he can never afford to pay the admission fee. At last, as he nears death, the moon suddenly shines in the cathedral window, illuminating the painting, and Nello and Patrasche breath their last, lying on the pavement of the square, and die in each others' arms gazing at the Rubens.

The book was pretty successful in English, but in Japanese it is a best seller to this day. All Japanese children read it in school, several movies have been made of it as well as a Japanese animé TV series. It seems every Japanese person who visits Europe comes here to photograph the statue. They (and everyone else) were taking turns posing with it.

At the left here is the single tower of the cathedral (123 m tall), which now houses four Rubens altarpieces. And, yes, the cathedral is still privately owned, and they still charge admission. We didn't go in. The architects were Jan (father) and Pieter (son) Appelmans, but neither of them ever saw it finished because it took 150 years to build. A monument to them stands to the right of the main catehdral door.

In several shop windows around the square, you could admire the famous Belgian lace. The photo at the right shows the setup for making bobbin lace, a technique that produces much finer work than crochet or than the tatting that I do. I'd love to try it, but it looks hideously difficult.

At the left here is another lace window, showing Christmas-ornament sized bobbin-lace motifs.

Nearby, we stopped to sample "Elixir d'Anvers" (I was surprised to learn that the French name of Antwerp is "Anvers"). The waitress brought out a tray of little cordial glasses of it to set on one of the barrels the establishment used as sidewalk tables (each prominently labeled with the Delirium elephant).

Written 30 May 2023

The elixir, a digestive, was bright yellow-green and fiercely alcoholic. It had a very complex herbal flavor that I couldn't parse, but the guide revealed that the two major components, among myriad others, were cinnamon and anise! It was surprisingly good. I actually took four or five sips, whereas that kind of thing usually stop me cold at one. Again, like all such liqueurs, it would be very good over vanilla, or even chocolate, ice cream.

Around just a couple of corners from the cathedral, we found ourselves in Green Square, the most important square of Antwerp in the 19th century. It was originally the cemetery associated with the the cathedral. When Napoleon came through he chagned to Bonaparte Square. When the city got rid of him, they changed it to Green Square, which is what it had been called informally when it was the cemetery.

In 2017 there were 117 trees on the square, but they got taken out when the whole thing was dug up to install a parking garage and subway line underneath. They plan to replace the trees that were taken out, but I was surprised to see that the remaining trees, the ones they didn't remove, are sweetgums—good old Liquidambar styraciflua like the ones all over the eastern seaboard of the U.S.—and they're pollarded (I've never seen a pollarded sweetgum before)! Why would anyone plant such a weedy short-lived tree, one that drops hundreds of tough, brown, spiky seed pods the size of golf balls every year, all over a city square? I guess they do grow fast . . . .

In the middle of the square is this 1860 statue of Rubens. (It cracks me up that the pedestal of this statue, together with a surprisingly large number of other buildings and monuments, bears the inscription "SPQA." It's a reference to the inscription SPQR, "the senate and the people of Rome," that the Romans spread all over the world. This one, of course, stands for "the senate and the people of Antwerp.") Rubens was born in Germany, then went to Italy to study painting, then came back to settle in Antwerp about 1608. In 1609 he painted one of his best works for the cathedral.

Written 31 May 2023

In the 1950's, Antwerp became an important fashion center, and Green Square was the center of the center. The majestic building in the right-hand photo was a grand fashion market—women's on the bottom floor, then underwear, then men, then children on the fourth, and the cupola on top was a toy store. The building is now the Hilton Hotel.

Then it was back to the square in front of the cathedral for our next tasting, at House of Waffles. Our guide (and several others in the course of the cruise) was at pains to point out that there is no such thing as a "Belgian waffle"—there are, instead, Brussels waffles and Liège waffles. The sign in the right-hand photo shows the two.

The Brussels waffle is yeast-leavened (the batter rises overnight), rectangular, extremely light, fluffy, and crispy, and (by the locals) eaten with nothing on top but powdered sugar. If you see somebody eating a Brussels waffle topped with (and becoming soggy under) ice cream, fruit, and whipped cream, you know he's a tourist.

Liège waffles on the other hand, are roundish (but with an irregular border), darker brown, denser, and have a slightly crunchy outer crust because pearl sugar is added right into the batter. I don't know whether its leavened with yeast or with soda. Those are the sturdy ones I see occasionally in sacks at Costco.

We tasted the Brussels style, which were served to us, right out in the street in front of the restaurant, in specially designed little brown paper boats, hot, sprinkled with powdered sugar, and stuck with little disposable wooden forks. They were great! I now see what all the fuss is about Belgian waffles. We'd had them a couple of times on the ship, and they were on the buffet at Jack's Casino, but those were invariably cold, soggy, and of no particular interest.

Photos in the windows of the restaurant showed other possible toppings. The one at the right here is dressed like a bagel, with cream cheese, smoked salmon, tomato, red onion, and scallions.

Also in the cathedral square is the Medieval stone well of Quentin Matsys (of which I didn't get a very good photo). Matsys was a blacksmith who fell in love with an art dealer's daughter. The art dealer didn't think a blacksmith was a suitable match, so Matsys set out to become a good enough painter to impress him. After presenting work after work to the dealer and having them rejected, he snuck into the shop while the dealer was away and painted a very life-like fly on the edge of some other painting. When the dealer returned and tried to shoo it away, he had to admit that Matsys had become a very skillful artist and agreed to the marriage. Matsys commemorated this event by making the elaborate wrought-iron canopy and pulley for the well, decorated on top by yet another statue of Brabo throwing the hand, this time dressed as a Roman soldier.

During the stroll back toward the river, our guide pulled out and passed around a tin of the hand-shaped butter cookies, so that we could all try them. Apparently, the butter canal was right next to the sugar canal, so the two formed and alliance and started producing cookies. For a while, apparently, among the merchants coming and going in the region, Antwerp was known as the "biscuit city."

Back at the riverside, the guide explained that the Ferris wheel used to be set up every year for the city's Christmas market, but during the COVID-19 pandemic, the company went bankrupt. Now the wheel is always there, but they don't run it often because it's expensive. As we passed, I could see the wheel turning, with people in it—maybe the tourist trade will let them run it regularly.

At the left is a building called the Stone Castle. It was built in 1220 and was the first stone building in the city. What you see here is only one-third of the original structure. About the turn of the 20th century, the city had the river straightened, so the rest of the castle was removed. The demolition included its very large chapel, so the Rubens altarpiece that graced it is now one of the four in the cathedral. The castle's basement now houses a cruise-ship terminal, though that's not where we docked.

The site of Antwerp has been occupied at least since the year 800, and Vikings also attacked here. The city and stone castle were originally on an island, but the channel between it and what's now the main part of the city was filled in. Archeologists are currently looking for the four bridges that originally joined the island to both banks of the river.

(The statue of a giant in the foreground does not represent Antigoon but another giant entirely. We didn't learn his story until our second visit to Antwerp, so I'll cover it there.)

Of course, like all medieval stone buildings, once it outlived its original defensive purpose, the stone castle became a prison. In those days, prisons did not included food service; the prisoner's families had to feed them. A local baker who was a charitable man brought free leftover rye bread to the prisoners one day a week, and for holidays like Easter, he added a few raisins and chocolate chips. The tradition has persisted, and even today, for holidays, local bakeries still make "rye bread for the damned" with raisins and chocolate chips in it.

We could have stayed in town after the tour, as Viking was offering shuttle buses back to the boat every hour or so until 5:30 pm, but we chose to go straight back and got there about 3:45 pm. We had missed the Viking lunch, of course, but if we'd been there, I would probably have ordered the "Nordic bowl" (featuring gravlax, shrimp salad, potato salad, etc.) and the café Liègois.

We took it easy until time for the captain's cocktail party (meaning, as always for me, I skipped the "enrichment lecture" on life in modern Belgium to work on this diary), then repaired to the lounge for our free cocktail and passed hors d'oevres before going in to dinner.

The regular appetizer on the dinner menu was puzzling. Nobody knew what a "beet and horseradish slice" would be. It turns out that what we call a bar cookie, the Brits call a "slice," and it extends to savory dishes as well. The appetizer turned out to be a sort of gelled beet terrine with horseradish topping cut into a sort of bar-cookie shape. I tasted David's, and it was okay.

But I chose the regional starter, "traditional fish soup with rouille sauce and croutons." Compared to the ones you get in France, it was pretty thin and watery, but not bad.

David's a sucker for ravioli, but I was still surprised when he chose the vegetarian entré, spinach and ricotta ravioli, over seared daurade, which is also one of his favorites.

I, on the other hand, skipped both and went for one more shot at the ribeye steak, with maître d'hôtel butter, which as always was great.

Inspired by the lovely one someone ordered the night before, I chose the cheese plate for dessert. It wasn't the same assortment, and was only five rather than six cheeses, but it was still excellent, and I ate everything but the grape stems and and some of the spicy apricot chutney.

David ordered the regional speciality dessert—chocolate profiteroles, another dish he orders at just about every opportunity.