Naturally, I was a bit worried. My father had taught me to keep my right foot in the middle of the lane, obviously not good advice when you are positioned on the right side of the car. In the days leading up to the trip, I adopted a pretend air of confidence. I felt it was necessary amidst my mother’s cries of, “You’re so brave! Think how dangerous it will be!” I had to feign indifference. Anxious? Me? Not at all. Preposterous!
Souvenirs. Tourists spend oodles of time and money in gift shops, wine shops, pottery studios and local artisan jewelers’ shops to find the right thing to serve as their tangible memory of a place. On our last trip to southern Italy, it wasn’t something that we bought there, but instead something we had delivered to our home that was the greatest reminder of how our trip changed us.
Upon first look, Antwerp, Belgium is as charming as the postcards found in souvenir shops throughout its twisting passages and nonsensical medieval streets. The sounds of the Flemish-Dutch language echo in the bars over pints of more than a hundred kinds of Belgian beer. The facades of the tall, thin, Amsterdam-style canal houses are stately and magnificent, and when experienced for the first time … you almost believe this is a little slice of Amsterdam.
