strangers on a train.

Made it home! The train wasn't so bad today. Above: the display window at Steen en Been.

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We had a "busy" day yesterday, if you can call drinking beer and playing Scrabble "doing something". Below: us playing Scrabble at Kulminator, supposedly one of the best beer bars in the world. Did it live up to the hype? It's a strange place, with VFW-style decor and lighting, and nothing but Baroque and Romantic music on the stereo.

But somehow it was a really comfortable place to drink great beer and get my ass destroyed in Scrabble.

It wasn't all iniquity. We started out with higher ideals, intending to begin the day with Culture at the Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten Antwerpen. But by the time we got motored down there, we were starting to notice some low blood sugar symptoms and thus we had lunch at Brasserie den Artist, which we mostly enjoyed very much.

Mara had a cheeseburger (!) and a beer (the lunch of champions), and I had a smoked duck salad with goat cheese fritters and a really natural-tasting raspberry vinaigrette (I probably should have ordered /a side order of testosterone/a pap smear/a vagina polisher/insert your own masculinity-related insult here) . Mara's burger was enormous and not 100% Textbook Burger Experience, but really good, sort of like a superjumbo version of Burgermeester's stuff.

This was one of our better dining experiences of the trip, I think. Nice room, convenient location, good food, decent music, etc. I'd go back.

After lunch, we went to KMSKA, then to Kulminator for beer and 1 Scrabble game, then to De Vagant for beer and a Scrabble game (Mara had two 50-pointers, that dulle teve) and a little sausage and cheese. And then to Paters Vaetje for Scrabble and beer and we split a croque madam. It was a long day, I ended up rallying and eventually evening up the Scrabble score at 2-2.

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