We took a hour or two drive down to Essen, Belgium to visit with Johan and Penny Rockx. They’re definitely great sport horse people and just great fun to be with. We enjoyed a walk around Antewerp, a great dinner at a quaint restaurant and some quality sport horse conversation. Represented last night at dinner? Dutch, Canadian, Australian and American.
The drive down took a bit longer than the 1.5 hours it has before as we got stopped in bumper to bumper 3 times and had to take a detour on what really look like a bike path turned temporary road while they worked on the regular road just over the canal. Funny!
You walk around the corner with this fabulous view of the square. It was the first European city square Ex had ever seen. I think he had a great time! How could we not all have a great time as Johan told great stories about the city, it’s development and the architecture!
We tried to get a couple nice people to take a picture of the entire group but I don’t keep the flash on with my camera so they all came out quite blurry. I was able to get one that was pretty decent of everyone else under the front of the church tho.
Here’s another one of the group (minus me) on the other end of the city near a quaint and romantic walk along the canal ending at the castle.
Here’s the end of the walk at the castle with the statue of the man who the city was sort of named after. Long story short, he took unrealistic tolls from people working the canal and they got tired of his unrealistic prices so they cut off his hand and threw it hence HandThrow which formed into Antewerp in the long term.
All told a great night with some fun people!!!