Thursday, January 18, 2007

Antwerp - Silvers all the Way

Next time when I went to Antwerp, I tried to explore a bit more. When you go on such short trips to a city, it is extremely difficult to take out time for doing so specially if it is a weekday. Fortunately, this time I was to go there on a Friday, decided to stay overnight. By the time we came out of office on Friday, it was above eight in the evening.
While going back to the hotel, stopped at the main shopping street, Meir
. It is around 1.5 to 2 kms stretch and connects the Central Station to the Grote Markt (No, I didn’t miss an ‘e’, that’s the correct spelling). The houses on both sides are old but gold. ;) We had our dinner in one of the restaurants and went to our hotel to decide on next day’s schedule.

So Saturday was kept to see a few things in Antwerp before returning back to Brussels in evening. Next morning I was to fly back to India from Brussels.
We (me and my two colleagues) short listed two museums to see.. Silver museum and Diamond museum. Both were very big, time consuming but we wanted to give it a go.

Silvers and diamonds.. Hmmm any female will jump with joy. When it struck to both my male colleagues, for a moment they looked at each other and were anxious to know about my likeness for jewellery and my shopping capabilities. :)) Fortunately for them, for jewellery I prefer to do only window shopping. :)

Since Diamond Museum is very near to Central Station from where we had to take the train later for Brussels, we kept it for the afternoon session.

Next morning, we visited beautiful Sterckshof Silver Museum first. From station it took us 20-25 minutes to reach by bus. Surrounded by a lush green garden, on the edge of the city, the museum is a beauty to watch. It is in a picturesque castle called Sterckshof, hence the name. It was a journey to the treasures of Belgian silver production. If I can, I will post a scanned map from the brochure I have.

The museum is full of antique silver artifacts. One floor had beautifully crafted cutlery, knife, spoons, plates, bowls, tea/coffee sets... all of different sizes. The lower floor has different theme based rooms like bedroom will have Clocks, mirror frames, photo frames, clothes hanger etc. Study room would contain different shaped pen stands, cigars, lamps etc. The other rooms had things like a chair, swords, shields.. you name it, they have it. Before visiting the museum, I had never imagined as how many things could be made out of silver.

It also shows different techniques used for processing of silver including how to take care of it.

Inside the museum, for security reasons the photography was strictly prohibited so this was the last picture taken before we made our grand entry to the museum. ;) Note the entrance door - a very heavy metal door of height till first floor.

The main entrance.

But looking at the scant crowd (there was hardly any person), I guess this museum is not very popular.




This is a very small video clip taken from the bus of our visit to the museum. I took it from my colleague to show it to you.

Once out of the museum, we again took a bus back to the station. Had a quick light lunch and went inside the Diamond Museum...

10 comments:

Prax said...

diamond museum????

now you got me interested... anything coming that way?

Cuckoo said...

PM,
Oh yes, Why do you think I mentioned about it here ?

Mridula said...

Silver museum, you must have had a gala time. Did they allow photography inside without flash?

Anonymous said...

Hmmmm ... silver and diamond museum ... interesting indeed. And the way you describe the silver museum, its a pity they didnt allow photography inside ... it would have been really good to have a dekko.

- Sigma

Anonymous said...

Hey the blog is coming along nicely. Will keep dropping by..

mathew said...

when do i get to read an italia saga.. :-P

Anonymous said...

Interesting read!!

Cuckoo said...

Mridula,
Yes, I had an interesting time. No, it is prohibited. Even for handycams, we were told no.

Sigma,
Yes, I agree. I was awestruck. :)

Arun,
Welcome to my blog. Thanks for liking it. Yes, please do come again. :)

Mathew,
LOLLL...you'll have to wait for sometime. As I said you can enjoy other places till then. ;)
And shhhhhh.. let it be a secret. People here don't know about it. :)

Prashanth,
Thank you. :)
BTW, Did you read my reply to your comment on my previous post here ? :))

jac said...

Gr8 that was !

Deepa said...

Well.. its known that "diamonds are the gorls best friend".. and they dont allow you to get photograped with your best friend(S)..grr...
hey.. vedio has indeed come out well