Antwerp
July 6: We left Paris and headed to Antwerp, which was a high point of the trip for me. I had met this girl by accident exchanging e-mails with her for a couple of months. Karen is from Antwerp. I thought it would be great to meet her while traveling in Europe. I made some calls in the states and set things up mostly by e-mail. Her father has a real passion for the history of Antwerp. The plan was to go on a guided tour of the city with Karen, her Dad, and Mom. So I met them at the Centraal station in Antwerp that is the train station, not to far from the hostel. The guided tour started and I saw Karen and her family -she was an attractive young woman. I heard the story of the giant’s hand being cut off (which is part of the original legend of Antwerp) saw some examples of the bacon architecture.As explained by Juilan, Karen's Dad 'Bacon style you can write better: I saw some examples of the typical white sand and red bricks style, they call it in Antwerp, the bacon-layers-style.'
Karen's family treated me to a nice diner while in Antwerp
I also saw Gothic and baroque cathedrals. Karen’s father gave me the history
of the city, and the tour and diner (pork cutlet), lasted until almost
11. The last part of my tour with the family from Antwerp was in
this old wine cellar type of place that was hundreds of years old, and
had been renovated. This place was made of old bricks and curved archways
and there were these huge old beer casks there, it was great. The wine
cellar seemed out of a medieval movie set you could imagine courtiers and
burghers jostling and drinking there. Also bought Sharon and Kristy,
my sister and niece presents there since jewelry was a good deal there.
They had a traditional Jewish quarter that did the jewelry and it was sold
by weight.
The story of Antwerp by Julien Guldentops 
The emergence of Antwerp is covered by the mists of times gone-by. Historians still are disagreeing on the exact year-date that market the birth of the city. The coat-of-arms of the city is featuring a symbolic hand, and the name of the city gave the pretext for concocting a fine legend around it. Salvias Barb, a nobleman from Caesar's retinue, is said to have followed a long time ago, a swan from the French city of Valentines, which took him across the Schooled to Nijmegen, on the way to his sweetheart. On his way back, he stopped on the bank of the river where Drone Antigen, the giant, was upholding his supremacy in the most cruel manner.
The skippers on the river Schooled had to pay a toll to the giant, and when they refused, Antigen would cut off the hand of the recalcitrant skipper, flinging in the water. Barb must have been greatly angered by this barbaric practice, and he challenged the giant, defeating him, and throwing, in his turn, the latter's cut off hand with a forceful throw in the river. One can imagine the joy among skippers and bank-dwellers at being delivered, thanks to Barb, from fear and domination. Th fact that Antwerp's coat-of-arms features two hands could give some verisimilitude to this story, but they are, in fact, only a symbol of freedom. Jef Lambeaux, the sculptor, has given a powerful, imaginative shape to the legend, in the form of a fountain adorning the Market Place. The truth about the origin of the city's name is in the toponymical clarification of "aanwerp", indicative of the spot on the quay with "alluvial deposit"