We are stay­ing above the old­est waf­fle shop in Antwerp, Van Hecke. It’s 108 years old and is just one of 20 inde­pen­dent shops that has been granted a 100-year trad­ing cer­tifi­cate in the city.

Van Hecke waffles

We started the day with a giant waf­fle made in grid­dles dat­ing from 1903. They were deli­cious — smooth on the inside and crispy on the out­side. Zaro owns the shop and is just mar­vel­lous. A real host.

We headed to Hip Hop street in Wilde Zee, a great shop­ping area full of inde­pen­dent bou­tiques. Try Kam­men­straat for shops and Fish­nChips for cool stuff. After a stop at Burie choco­late shop near Oudan for good­ies, we had a pic­nic at Hen­driks Conscienceplein.

This small square is a must. It is beau­ti­ful, only a few tourists scat­tered around and it is

Hen­driks Conscienceplein

dom­i­nated by a vast baroque church. Good busk­ing musi­cians pro­vide a sound­track to munch by.

We returned to Grotes Markt, had a beer and went inside Olv Kathe­draal. It’s full of dark Rubens, ornate chapels and glit­ter­ing treasures.

Olv Kathe­draal

We aimed for Quartier Latin for our next stop, an up mar­ket shop­ping dis­trict. Wow! It just made you wish you could afford to buy every­thing with clothes, shoes and bags to die for.

Around the cor­ner is the vast The­ater Plein with its strik­ing archi­tec­ture, giant rain shel­ter and skate­board­ing kids hav­ing fun.

We dashed home and avoided a huge rain­storm. When the weather cleared we strolled to Waalse Kaai for Bollekesfeest 2011 — a three-day tast­ing fes­ti­val. From local beer to cock­tails, sausage to oys­ters, bis­cuits to marzi­pan bread, you could sam­ple and buy at

Bollekesfeest

cheap prices.

The main sec­tion hosted mini pop up restau­rants from the city’s most famous chefs. Here you could sam­ple from expen­sive menus for a frac­tion of the price, around €6–11 a dish.

We filled our­selves on tem­pura, Bel­gian beer and Japan­ese cock­tails before walk­ing past the huge open air dance floor play­ing music that made me want to join in the fun.

Bollekesfeest is open 6pm-midnight for three days in August and it is child friendly.

Tomor­row we will be sad to leave Antwerp and it is our final day of our train­ca­tion. We will head to Brus­sels for a few hours look around and get the Eurostar home.

It’s been the best hol­i­day I’ve had for years. Thank you to Els at Flan­ders Tourist Board, Rianne at Holland.com and Monika and Brigitte at Visit Koeln.

Shop­ping!

Where do you start in Antwerp? There’s just so much choice. We decided to start with Zuid dis­trict and FoMu, the Foto­Mu­seum which exhibits film, photo and new media.

It’s a great build­ing with a fan­tas­tic self-documenting exhi­bi­tion by Eli­nor Carucci. The Nikon Press Awards nom­i­na­tions and win­ners were there, includ­ing mov­ing pho­to­jour­nal­ism from Haiti. The awards cap­tured the kids’ atten­tion. The best show was Jacques Sonck’s stu­dio por­traits. His images prompted many ques­tions from the chil­dren about beauty and normality.

M HKA

We walked up Waalse Kaai to M HKA, the Museum of Con­tem­po­rary Art. It had video from British artist Emily Wardill and a col­lec­tion arranged by jour­nal­ist Jeff Lam­brecht, who invited 14 artists from Egypt, Iraq, Rus­sia, India and China. It had a spe­cial room for kids with new media instal­la­tions they could play with.

As a trade off we let the kids play in a great park at the top of Walse Kaai while we had a pic­nic. Refreshed with ice lol­lies we walked in the hot sun along the river bank towards T Steen, a for­mer fortress, prison, museum and now a bar. It has mad white arms that grow

T Steen

and shrink while horns honk. What more could you wish for?

We car­ried on up to the Pilotage and entered Eilandje dis­trict to go to MAS, the new museum which tells the city’s story. The build­ing is mod­ern and huge. At the top is a chance to see a panoramic view of Antwerp.

It’s eight floors of exhibits are per­fect for chil­dren. Draw­ers can be opened to see exhibits, mes­sages can be put into bot­tles, walls chalked, shad­ows played with, inter­ac­tive maps explored — a real hands on experience.

We walked along the dock towards Noorde­plan and Spoor Noord, a large park where the locals hang out when the sun shines.

In the cen­tre is Cargo Zomer­bar, a fan­tas­tic rail­way shed which now houses a vibrant

Cargo Zomer­bar

restau­rant and bar open in the sum­mer months which is great for kids.

At the front are two foun­tains you can jump in and a huge play park. But the best bit is the graf­fiti for­est, where crews world­wide have sprayed their marks under the bridge arches nearby. At the back is a vast skatepark which was being used by all ages. The park is not on the tourist trail but if you are vis­it­ing with kids in the sum­mer, it’s lovely treat for sight­see­ing weary children.

Graf­fiti Forest

We packed our bags and ven­tured out in Cologne for one last look around at street sculp­tures and road relief city maps.

Koln sta­tion

We headed to Koln Hbf for our ICE train to Brus­sels Nord. Again we’d got a spe­cial €42 fam­ily ticket with another crazy con­nec­tion — this time 10 min­utes and we didn’t have any plat­form info.

We trav­elled across Ger­many at 248kph and arrived in Brus­sels 90 min­utes later. We dashed down the stairs, looked at the depar­tures screen and saw our train to Antwerp was at plat­form 11. The sta­tion is small and it was easy to make it in time. We got on board and 30 min­utes later we were in Antwerp.

We walked to our hotel through the dia­mond dis­trict. Around 80% of rough dia­monds pass through this small area. The designs were breath­tak­ing — the credit card was whis­per­ing to me.

We walked down Meir, the main shop­ping cen­tre where Napoleon’s old gaff is now a choco­late shop. We got to

ICE train

Nationalestraat where we have a lit­tle flat above the city’s old­est waf­fle shop.

After a free ice cream from the waf­fle shop (and a sup­plies restock at a nearby super­mar­ket), we ven­tured out to explore. Groen Plaats with its statue of Rubens is a vast square with a back­drop of the huge Cathe­dral of our Lady. While it looks small com­pared to Cologne’s Dom, it is impressive.

We walked through to Grote Mar­ket, which is flanked by ornate Guild Halls topped with gilt stat­ues and a majes­tic town hall with 40 entrances. In the cen­tre is the Brabo foun­tain, which depicts how Antwerp got its name. Sil­vius Brabo killed the great Anti­goon and cut his hand off and threw it into the Scheldt. Wer­pen is Dutch for “throw“‘ so Handw­er­pen (to throw a hand) became Antwerp.

Brabo foun­tain

We were hun­gry so picked up some fries with mayo and headed to the river. We aimed for Steen Plein, a float­ing pon­toon on the Scheldt which made strange groan­ing sounds when it shifted in the wake of pass­ing boats. The nearby flouro fun fair kept the kids enter­tained with a merry-go-round accom­pa­nied with loud Euro pop.

It was time to head for home and we took in Antwerp’s old­est street, Hoogstraat, on the way back with its old bars and 17th cen­tury buildings.

There is so much to do here, I’ve no idea how we can fit it in dur­ing our two-day visit.

Woken by the bone-rattling sound of the bells of Dom, we wolfed down a huge buf­fet break­fast. Try­ing to save pen­nies, I snuck away rolls, ham and cheese for a pic­nic lunch.

Around 70% of Cologne was destroyed between 1942–45 and 90% of the inner city was flat­tened. Hardly any surviving

River bank cobbles

houses in the Old City got through the war with­out sus­tain­ing dam­age. Today’s mix of archi­tec­ture is fas­ci­nat­ing. Old Ger­many stands tall with the majesty of the cathe­dral and old churches, and the new era of design in the 50s and 60s is every­where, together with more recent architecture.

A Rhine river cruise is the best way to see Cologne if you’ve only got a short stay in the city. We took a one-hour trip with KD cruises, arranged by the Koeln Tourist Board.

We sailed from Pier 2 at the Fisch Markt nr St Martin’s Church and passed under the Deutzer Brucke and Sev­erins­brucke, tak­ing in the sights.

Giant black block build­ings rose up with square bronze win­dows, white cubes with

Kolsch beer

coloured jut­ting bal­conies glinted in the sun, oval struc­tures changed colour as our view­point moved and the three Crane Build­ing loomed large with their unre­lent­ing but beau­ti­ful stark­ness. We watched it all float on by while we stood at the stern of the ship with Kolsch beer, Japan­ese tourists beg­ging to take pho­tos of our blonde children.

Three crane buildings

It was very hot today in Cologne and there is only one thing kids want to do when they are hot — get into water. The Rhein­garten is per­fect with its mod­ern water instal­la­tion sculp­ture. It was full of kids tak­ing off clothes and plung­ing into the cool water. Our kids joined in and it was soon an inter­na­tional mix brought together by the love of splashing.

Rhine river bank

After our pic­nic we headed for Cologne’s shops, of which there are hun­dreds. Schilder­gasse and Hohes­trasse look much like any other major city High Street with Foot­locker and H&M mak­ing an appear­ance sev­eral times. We dodged the eager shop­pers and headed up to the Bel­gian Quarter.

The streets began to look dif­fer­ent, with old build­ings or fifties-looking facades lined with trees and flow­ers. At Brus­sels Sq we found the most mar­vel­lous untouched 1950s cafe bar.

1950s Cafe

The seats, inte­rior fit­tings, toi­lets, bar and floor are all orig­i­nal. We supped some Kolsch, tak­ing in the bar lounge audio.

Oppo­site was a large ornate church, dot­ted with white ball cafe lights among the green­ery of the sur­round­ing park. Chess and table ten­nis tables, as well as wooden play­ground equip­ment were being used by locals.

The Bel­gian Quar­ter has inde­pen­dent shops, bak­ers, art and home shops. You won’t find many trans­lated menus here and tourists are far fewer than on the main shop­ping thor­ough­fares. It is a must visit, espe­cially the fifties cafe Hall­mack­en­reuter, Brus­seler Platz 9, which appar­ently also does a great breakfast).

You can’t visit Ger­many and not buy Adidas

We got to Ams­ter­dam at 10am — far too early for the 1138 train to Utrecht, but then I can’t stand being late.

We had a very tight con­nec­tion at Utrecht for Cologne. We made sure we were in the mid­dle of the duplex (dou­ble decker) train on the flip down seats near the exit.

We rushed off once we arrived in Utrecht at plat 15 and ran to plat 4. We had five mins to get our con­nec­tion. We made it! But then the announcer said our train was at plat 18 — back at the other end of the sta­tion. Argh! We sprinted. I flew the kids on each arm behind me. We got the train with 30 secs to spare.

The high speed ICE was mod­ern and swish. We had a spa­cious fam­ily com­part­ment with curved seats around a big table in a sep­a­rate glass win­dowed area. The kids were even given a free ice lolly.

I booked the Ams­ter­dam to Cologne leg direct with Deutsche Bahn. It was a spe­cial price because of the five min con­nec­tion — €42. It was a huge stress with kids and I would rec­om­mend a more sen­si­ble 30 minute con­nec­tion time and pay the extra €100. If we missed it, we’d have paid that and added another few hours to the jour­ney. Rail Europe only books for 30 min

Cologne cathe­dral

con­nec­tions — I can see why!

We arrived in Cologne, picked up our Wel­come Cards (dis­count off attrac­tions and free trans­port) and found our hotel. We dumped the bags and rushed out to Cologne Cathe­dral. It’s Germany’s most vis­ited land­mark with 20,000 vis­i­tors daily.

The vast gothic struc­ture man­ages to cope with the vis­i­tors, show­ing off jewel coloured win­dows and his­tor­i­cal arti­facts. Some of the win­dows were amaz­ing and had mod­ern pixel designs.

We paid €6 to enter the Cathe­dral Trea­sury, a must for kids who gasp in awe at golden gob­lets hold­ing the bones of saints, jew­elled dag­gers, gar­ments with gold thread, ancient books and swords. The show­stop­per is the shrine of the Three Magi.

Museum Lud­wig

We headed into nearby Museum Lud­wig which houses the largest col­lec­tion of Pop Art out­side of the US. Kids go free and this is a fam­ily friendly place with exhibits dis­play­ing books about the artist. The build­ing itself is fabulous.

We walked to the river and across the Hohen­zollern­brucke rail­way bridge — the city’s only bridge to sur­vive Allied bomb­ing. Today, lovers write their ini­tials on pad­locks and clip them onto the bridge, throw­ing the keys into the Rhine.

The kids fas­tened our lock to the rails “Turn­ers, Whit­stable, Aug 2011″ and threw the keys into the river.

After enjoy­ing a cou­ple of large Kolsch beers, the local fer­mented beer spe­cial­ity, we walked home through the Old Town find­ing a huge Roman arche­o­log­i­cal dig under­way in a big square.

Hohen­zollern­brucke Bridge

This morn­ing we headed out to De Pijp to look for the long street mar­ket on Albert Cuyp­straat. It was full of blue wigs, lace tights, giant prawns, fish heads, huge coloured cheeses, clothes, bikes and toiletries.

At the end was the lush green­ery of Sarphati­park where the kids played on a climb­ing frame. We had our pic­nic and fed the left­over bread to the ducks, watched by a grumpy, hunched heron.

We walked north through Fred­eriks Plein and up through Utretch­ses­traat. A win­dow dis­play of large wind­mills in dark, milk and white choco­late stopped us in our tracks. We went inside to see choco­lates being made before buy­ing choco­late heart lollipops.

The build­ings increased in grandeur around Keiz­er­gracht and Reg­uliers­gracht. The gables of the nar­row houses com­peted with each other with ornate designs. The fronts of the houses are built with the gables slop­ing out­wards so the facades are pro­tected when the hoist­ing beams on the gables are used. Large items are still hoisted up and through the win­dows, rather than car­ried with dif­fi­culty up the very nar­row, steep staircases.

We met our Dutch friend at Ams­tel Veld at a cafe called Nel. It is on a cob­bled open area with a kids play­ground. The kids had fun while we drank wine and tried Bit­ter­ballen — the famous fried Dutch snack. Nel serves the best Bit­ter­ballen accord­ing to my Dutch insider.

Anne Frank Huis

We dumped the scoot­ers back at the flat and made our way to Anne Frank Huis. The queue was around the block but thank­fully we had booked online a few weeks ago, so we pressed a buzzer and went straight in. Avoid­ing queues at muse­ums makes for an eas­ier visit with kids.

If it is rain­ing you will be asked to put your wet coat in a car­rier bag, which they pro­vide. The light­ing is sub­dued to pro­tect exhibits, it is small and gets cramped inside. Try vis­it­ing around 7pm when there are fewer visitors.

My copy of Anne Frank was given to me when I was 11 and I’ve read it many times. My seven year old daugh­ter is inter­ested in the story. If you visit with chil­dren, I rec­om­mend you let them explore the offi­cial web­site. It has the hid­ing place in 3D (with interactive

Annex

sec­tions), which explains the story in a way their young minds can process.

The book­case is there while the rooms are bare with a few pic­tures on the wall. My daugh­ter was full of questions

after­wards, the main one being why did some peo­ple sur­vive while oth­ers died? The Anne Frank Huis helped her under­stand that some­times there aren’t any answers.

Good­bye Ams­ter­dam and thank you to Rianne at Holland.com for sup­port­ing us with I AMSTERDAM cards. We loved the city!

The kids slept in — a bonus. We packed a pic­nic and headed out on foot with the scoot­ers to the flower mar­ket, Amsterdam’s last remain­ing float­ing market.

Float­ing flower market

Rows of boxes of brown, gnarled bulbs promised brightly coloured blooms on accom­pa­ny­ing pho­tos. The black Queen of the Night took my fancy, although I had Whit­ney Hous­ton stuck in my head for hours. Just €3 for 25 bulbs. Mike’s pained face reminded me of lug­gage hell and his poor back.

Our route took us to Spui and an open-air book mar­ket. Old sheet maps, retro posters, annu­als and vin­tage books were on offer. We left brows­ing behind for the high street and the main­stream shops on Kalverstraat.

Open air book market

While Mike checked out the end­less train­ers (and winced at the prices), the kids were buy­ing up the EU’s sur­plus sup­plies of PEZ. Our flat now looks like a candy drug den and is filled with tiny white sugar bricks.

We stum­bled onto Dam, sim­i­lar to Covent Gar­den with bound­aries that her­ald faded archi­tec­tural grandeur, seedy tourist shops and sta­tic street per­form­ers dressed as Darth Vader or wear­ing hor­ror masks.

We moved towards the Nine Lit­tle Streets, stop­ping on a bench over a canal for our pic­nic. These streets span the Prin­sen­gracht, Keiz­ers­gracht and Heren­gracht canals between Raad­huis­straat and Lei­destraat. The narrow

Nine lit­tle streets

streets and ornate build­ings are burst­ing with cafes sell­ing gourmet treats, inde­pen­dent bou­tiques, jew­ellers and col­lectible homewares.

The kids were tired so we got the tram to Cen­traal sta­tion and made our way out to NEMO, the sci­ence cen­tre housed in a huge green boat structure.

NEMO

This amaz­ing build­ing is a com­plete hands on sci­ence and tech­nol­ogy expe­ri­ence for kids. Stand inside a giant soap bub­ble, power an aero­plane using solar power, under­stand DNA, play with mag­netic fields, make dams and cre­ate fragrances.

Inside NEMO

The best part was the ter­raced pad­dling pool on the roof and the panoramic view of the city. “Just the best place ever,” said the kids.

A quick lasagne and pasta take out from a deli near the flat and we were refreshed to go back out and pick up the Hol­land Inter­na­tional river

NEMO panoramic

cruise. We went at 9pm as I wanted the kids to see Ams­ter­dam at night, espe­cially the bridges all lit with fairy lights. We lis­tened to the his­tory of the city as our boat dipped under illu­mi­nated tun­nels and gave mys­te­ri­ous glimpses of lives being lived in the eclec­tic house­boats lin­ing the canals.

Lit canal bridge

At 2.30, I was rolling around my bed as the ship pitched with the waves. I remem­bered my last stay on a ship which was as a school girl on the edu­ca­tional cruise ship Jupiter. It sunk the fol­low­ing year killing three kids and a teacher. Argh.

Ams­ter­dam cen­tral station

After Stena’s wake up call of “Don’t worry be happy” through the ceil­ing speaker at 6.30am, we docked in Hoek Van Hol­land and got the train to Ams­ter­dam via Rot­ter­dam. It went smoothly and plat­form changes/luggage hauling/not los­ing kids went well.

We picked up our I AMSTERDAM cards at the Tourist Infor­ma­tion oppo­site Cen­traal sta­tion and headed on the no 24 tram to our base­ment flat. It’s cute with three rooms and kitchen, giv­ing us a loca­tion near the museums.

After a sup­plies dash to Aldi for bread, milk, ham and cheese, we walked to the big I AMSTERDAM sign for oblig­a­tory pho­tos of kids climb­ing over the giant let­ters. After Molly jammed her­self in an “a” for pos­ter­ity, we trun­dled over to the Van Gogh museum.

Van Gogh museum

The queues were very long but our passes allowed us to fast track. It was heav­ing but we man­aged to see one of the 20-odd Sun­flow­ers he painted, the Irises and Wheat­field and Crows.

Molly said: “Of course he was mad. I mean he cut his ear off and blew his head off with a shot­gun. Who does that?”

Straight after we found the nearby Dia­mant Museumto sate our thirst for jew­els. It was

Dia­mant museum

bril­liant for kids with loads of sparkle, crowns and even a sil­ver gorilla skull stud­ded with 17,000 diamonds.

The kids dressed them­selves with crowns and dia­mond neck­laces as part of an inter­ac­tive fea­ture which emailled the bejew­elled images home.

After a quick play in a park, we promised a snack in return for a visit to Stedelijkmod­ern art museum. It’s tem­po­rary at the moment while the new one is being built. We got a reduced entry with our passes, €7.50 each and kids were free.

Stedelijk museum

It was calm, quiet and free from the crowds. The friendly staff showed us to a work­shop where the kids could design their own poster to take home.

After giv­ing graphic design­ers a run for their money, we headed for the exhibits of Warhol, Matisse, Dutch mod­ern artists and fur­ni­ture design­ers. The slick cafe was very child friendly with a rather fab hot choco­late milk that you made yourself.

Exhausted, we refu­elled with a tasty pizza and then ambled home look­ing at the expen­sive antique shops, deter­mined look­ing cyclists whizzing along and brightly coloured boats

Stedelijk museum

bob­bing on the canal.

Whit­stable train station

We got on the 1539 to Lon­don. Nav­i­gat­ing Vic­to­ria with three bags, two kids and two scoot­ers was hot and heavy. We obvi­ously arrived in the city at rush hour but it wasn’t as busy as expected, prob­a­bly because peo­ple had left early because of the riots.

Stena sug­gests get­ting the 1820 direct to Har­wich Inter­na­tional but a look on Trainline.com showed this train didn’t exist. A call to Stena proved fruit­less so we planned for the 1900 train rec­om­mended by themaninseat61.com.

After a McD pit stop, a look at Liv­er­pool Street’s dept boards showed the 1820 direct did exist and was delayed. We pegged it and got on a jammed train. We squished next to an Amer­i­can girl who shared our choc mini rolls while Molly told her our entire history.

The boat

Har­wich Inter­na­tional is a low key place. A small queue and a pass­port check and we were on board Stena Hol­landica look­ing for cabin 11101.

The ferry is huge, mod­ern and clean. After years in the ship­ping indus­try, I am no fan of pas­sen­ger ships but this one is ok. Our cabin looks just like the pic­ture on the web­site. The bath­room is a good design with a pow­er­ful shower and the beds are comfy.

They’ve under­stood what par­ents need with an under 12s play area next to the bar. While a magi­cian enter­tained them, blow­ing up end­less bal­loons, we could watch them through the glass while sip­ping G&Ts.

At 1115pm we set off for rainy Hol­land. We sur­vived the first leg, now we have to locate our flat in the ‘dam!