Could This Be Belgium's Cutest City?

Sometimes the Best Thing about Travel is the Journey

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A fabulous little Fokker Photo - Antwerp, Belgium

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My favourite of my regular business journeys these days is the route between Manchester and Antwerp that's run by the lovely little airline VLM. If you are lucky enough to have access to Manchester Airport, London City or Frankfurt and you need to go to Antwerp, then you could be in for a treat. Because these are the airports from which the lovely little airline VLM flies.VLM is in the process of metamorphosing and combining with another lovely little airline and will soon be known as City Jet. Both are part of the KLM-Air France group and both are focused on serving business travelers.When I first started traveling for business, flying around all over the place was still quite good fun. Y...Read More

My favourite of my regular business journeys these days is the route between Manchester and Antwerp that's run by the lovely little airline VLM. If you are lucky enough to have access to Manchester Airport, London City or Frankfurt and you need to go to Antwerp, then you could be in for a treat. Because these are the airports from which the lovely little airline VLM flies.
VLM is in the process of metamorphosing and combining with another lovely little airline and will soon be known as City Jet. Both are part of the KLM-Air France group and both are focused on serving business travelers.
When I first started traveling for business, flying around all over the place was still quite good fun. You got fed, you got free booze, if the airline lost your luggage they paid compensation, you amassed zillions of air-miles and if you missed a flight the airlines would go to extreme lengths to find clever ways to get you to your destination. But over the years the fun got squished and the stress increased. It can sometimes seem as if the airlines and airports are competing with the terrorists to induce ever more complex and unpleasant barriers to actually trying to enjoy yourself.
Turning up an hour before a flight used to be standard – increased security checks put paid to that and caused massive delays. Parking near the airport was standard - the greedy airports put paid to that one by whamming up the fees. Carrying your nail scissors or eyebrow tweezers soon became a crime and attempting to actually enjoy travel became more and more of a challenge. So why all this pre-amble of misery and depression? Simply because VLM offers the attention to detail that actually makes flying almost fun again.
How VLM get it right - at the Manchester End

VLM use terminal three which is the quietest of the three Manchester terminals. It's within easy walking distance of the Long Stay Car Park and since the plane holds only 50 or so passengers, you'll never find a long queue for check in. My morning flight is at 8.25 and so long as I'm in the terminal 50 minutes or more beforehand, I can be pretty confident of not needing to worry. I recently got stuck in a motorway closure and made it to the airport just 30 minutes before the flight was due to leave. No problem – they still let me through.
How VLM get it right - in the air

This little airline hasn't forgotten how to treat passengers as human beings. You get a pre-assigned seat - hoorah, no fighting for a space on the plane. The planes are Fokker 50s - small planes with just 4 seats across and about 13 rows. The seats are leather and you get one of those rare things that our budget airline friends have long abandoned - LEG ROOM! The crew are smartly dressed, although the flight attendants tend to be a bit bossy but they treat you nicely. A boiled sweet before take off - how twee! A cheese or ham roll and a drink on the short flight and best of all a nice square of Belgian chocolate after your drink. Yum! When did you last get chocolate on EasyJet?
How VLM get it right - at the Antwerp End

Antwerp is a really tiddly little airport. I believe they have just 10 flights a day - to London City, Manchester and Frankfurt. There are no gates to park up at - the plane just taxis up to within about 40m of the arrivals and lets you off. They have loads of umbrellas on standby so that if it rains someone will rush out and lend you one so you don't get wet on your short walk to passport control. As there are never more than 50 passengers arriving, the passport line is always short and with such a short distance and so few bags, you never wait more than a minute or two to get your bag. It's entirely realistic to be out of the airport within 5 minutes of landing. The only thing to watch out for is that once the taxis have gone, that's it - there won't be any more so don't hang on and hope - you'll need to go and find someone to call you another if they run out especially on the evening flights.

Check in at Antwerp is open until just 15 minutes before the flight is due to leave. Check in, drop your bag and you can be sitting in the departure lounge five minutes later. You might have to wake up the security guys to get them to check your hand-luggage because it's fair to say they aren't over-worked. But whatever you do, don't turn up 2 hours before your flight because there's absolutely nothing to do. Since none of the destinations are covered by duty free, there's very little to buy in the shop. You can buy alcohol but since the shop is on the landside rather than airside, you'll have to shop BEFORE you check in so your booze can go in your bag. It's all very weird.
Whilst sitting around Antwerp airport it's not unusual to see tiny little private jets standing around waiting for the fantastically wealthy diamond traders that trade in Antwerp. These are the only planes that can succeed in making a Fokker 50 look like a Jumbo Jet by comparison. Whilst I've only once been lucky enough to have the 'private jet' experience (and I got a little over-excited and I'm sure I went wheeeeeeeeee on both take off and landing) flying VLM is the closest I can get without breaking the bank.
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Wok A Way Antwerp South

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Restaurant | "Run! Don't Wok"

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Wok A Way is a small Belgian chain of fast food oriental restaurants attempting to fill a niche of 'better than BurgerKing' but with aspirations to be a sort of local Wagamama. It's been running since 1999 and it's fair to say it's not exactly taken over the world and it hasn't got everything right yet based on our experience. There are a couple of Wok A Way outlets in Antwerp and the one we visited was the South Antwerp branch on De Burburestraat , a rather upmarket and trendy area. I went there recently with a group of colleagues after a meeting at our factory in Antwerp and unfortunately none of us were overly impressed.On entering the place looked nice with clean, crisp lines, lots of ...Read More

Wok A Way is a small Belgian chain of fast food oriental restaurants attempting to fill a niche of 'better than BurgerKing' but with aspirations to be a sort of local Wagamama. It's been running since 1999 and it's fair to say it's not exactly taken over the world and it hasn't got everything right yet based on our experience. There are a couple of Wok A Way outlets in Antwerp and the one we visited was the South Antwerp branch on De Burburestraat , a rather upmarket and trendy area. I went there recently with a group of colleagues after a meeting at our factory in Antwerp and unfortunately none of us were overly impressed.

On entering the place looked nice with clean, crisp lines, lots of light wooden laminate and an open kitchen where I expected to be able to watch the chefs work their magic. We passed some tables and a bar with stools where you could sit and watch the kitchen preparing the food and then we got a shock when we noticed that our colleagues appeared to be sitting on the floor. As we got closer we realised that the table was sunken and whilst they were indeed sitting on cushions on the floor, their feet were in a well. One of the ladies had been quite distressed about just how to get into such a position whilst wearing a skirt and was already worrying about how she would get out again at the end of the meal.

Menus were available in Flemish, French and English and were not very long in any language. There were three soups, one of which was a 'main course' soup, nine 'dim sum' options, half a dozen sushi 'sets' and a page and a half of 'wok dishes' ranging from standard dishes through to some more expensive specials. Dim Sum was a bit of a catch-all phrase covering any starters that weren't sushi and would probably not have met the definition in any true Chinese restaurant. If it was small and you got a few pieces, then they called it dim sum. If you wanted to you could design your own wok dish by picking your meat, fish or vegetable, one of two spice or herb combinations and a sauce from a rather long list.

Most of us decided to opt for a meal-deal of either sushi or dim sum followed by a standard grade wok dish with a drink thrown in for good measure. The cost of this combo was €12 which probably should have been good value if I'd had any faith that the restaurant had actually worked out what made up each 'meal'. The waitress dumped a few sheets of plain paper and a pen on the table and told us to write down what we wanted then send someone over the counter to place the order and pay the bill. A few eyebrows were raised at such an arrangement and left us with the feeling that they somehow expected us to do a runner after scarfing down our noodles. I think it would have been tricky as I doubt the colleague in the skirt could have got out of the hole we were sitting in without drawing attention to herself.

Some of the dishes had fun names though not necessarily very descriptive ones. My starter of 'One Night in Bangkok' consisted of 4 steamed prawn dumplings. The link between product and name was far from obvious. If they'd been fish balls I could have seen a tenuous association with ping pong balls but little Chinese parcels didn't really fit the bill. For main course I ordered a dish called a 'seafood slammer' but a couple of the ladies chose 'Bollywood Beauty' or 'Shanghai Syndrome'.

With the order placed and paid for, the food came very quickly suggesting that the starters were pre-cooked or rapidly warmed through. Fast food should of course be fast but if you're sitting down with a group of people you don't want it so fast that they have to bring the indigestion tablets with the coffees. All the dishes were presented on small black plastic trays with a choice of chopsticks or fork-and-spoon wrapped up in a paper napkin. I suspect the black tray system might have been a way to reduce the need to wipe the tables down between diners or to make it safer for the waitress to serve a bunch of people who were sitting on the floor without throwing their food over them.

Three of us were indulging in the delights of a night in the Thai capital and not entirely thrilled with the experience. The dumplings arrived in a small bamboo steamer, laid out on a banana leaf lining and looking like pale little foetuses. They were accompanied by a nasty plastic pot of chili sauce which was far too big for the number of dumplings provided and generally lowered the tone of the dish. The guy next to me had filo wrapped prawns that looked like an Iceland party platter special – very classy. On the other side a colleague was eating tuna sushi rolls and failing to do a good job with his chopsticks leading to the sacrifice of one piece of sushi onto the submerged floor and much speculation about how the restaurant would be able to clean the holes afterwards. The dumplings were wrapped in an anaemic, sticky coating that seemed to be incapable of keeping company with the interior contents so that pretty much the only way to control the little beasts was to stab one with a chop stick and bundle it into my mouth.

When all was done and dusted on the starters, the trays were cleared and the main courses followed very quickly. This summer we had a holiday in Australia and almost lived off noodles so I was looking forward to a bit of vacation nostalgia and imagining something really tasty and interesting. My dish was just really disappointing and, based on comments around the table, I wasn't in a minority for thinking that. The bowls were the size of a large high sided soup or cereal bowl and the contents weren't exactly generous. One colleague offered the observation that whilst it wasn't a lot of food it was more than enough of what it was – i.e. a very 'samey' dish with little to differentiate the first mouthful from the last. My dish had been described as a mix of seafood, noodles and veggies with a spicy black pepper sauce but they'd omitted one really important detail from the description – that it had clearly been designed as a way to eat into the European celery mountain. I hate the stuff but it's exceptionally hard to avoid when it's chopped in tiny pieces and thorough stir fried. Everything in the dish was small and it felt a bit like eating hot coleslaw – tiny bits of carrot and celery, the world's teeniest shrimps that looked like they'd barely felt the water flowing over their exoskeletons before being harvested far too young. There were some tiny rubber bands of squid and some rather slimy pieces of white fish. Whether by accident or design (perhaps to make eating the easier) the noodles had been chopped into tiny pieces which I also found disappointing. What's the point in having noodles if they aren't long and stringy? If I wanted short noodles I'd buy alphabetti spaghetti.

I'm a whiz with chopsticks so I had no problem to get through my dish, following the little message written on the inside of the bowl encouraging me to get to the bottom. The spicy black pepper sauce was neither spicy nor peppery and it took quite a lot of chili sauce to give the dish any personality at all.

With the main courses polished off we were all feeling a bit flat and some still a bit hungry. A couple of us ordered ice-cream and were disappointed when it arrived in little cardboard tubs like a tub of Haagen Dazs. How much effort would it have taken to put it in a bowl? A few people had coffees or additional drinks and then we were all finished and it was time to leave. I had a general sense that we'd have received more human interaction if we'd gone to McDonalds. The food wasn't bad – it was just very forgettable and the interesting surroundings and strange seating couldn't compensate for the overwhelming ordinariness of the food. I don't think anyone will be rushing back to eat there again.
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Member Rating 2 out of 5 on September 20, 2009

Wok A Way Antwerp South
De Burburestraat 43
Antwerp, Belgium
+32 (3) 2489090

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Bacino Restaurant

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Restaurant | "The Muscular Mussels of Antwerp"

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I have an on-going debate with my Belgian colleague Joep about who and what Belgium is famous for. We've done the 'Name 10 'famous' Belgians' challenge a dozen times and even tracked down the www.famousbelgians.net website to substantiate some of the names were weren't too sure about. But one thing we both agree on is that it's easier to think of famous foodstuffs for which Belgian is renowned. There's the chocolate, the zillions of different beers, the outstanding national skills with chips and my favourite - mussels. Everyone has probably heard of Jean-Claude van Damme - the man nicknamed the muscles from Brussels. This review is an account of my hunt for the mussels of Antwerp.I go to t...Read More

Member Rating 3 out of 5 on September 20, 2009

Bacino Restaurant
Torfbrug 5
Antwerp, Belgium 2000

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Het Vermoeide Model

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Restaurant | "I'll Have A Watery Mess Please"

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I'm lucky to have friends, Alex and Katya, who live in Antwerp and when I visit the city for work, I try to meet up with them to play with their very fine Persian cat and go out for dinner. They have been living there for a couple of years so by now they know where's worth a visit and I've not been disappointed with any of their choices. Just before Christmas we set out to find some dinner and Katya and I decided we wanted mussels. We strolled around the town centre until we found Het Vermoeide Model, checked the menu boards outside to confirm the presence of mussels and headed in.Entering the restaurant was like stepping back in time. The ground floor had a small rooms with bare brick wal...Read More

I'm lucky to have friends, Alex and Katya, who live in Antwerp and when I visit the city for work, I try to meet up with them to play with their very fine Persian cat and go out for dinner. They have been living there for a couple of years so by now they know where's worth a visit and I've not been disappointed with any of their choices. Just before Christmas we set out to find some dinner and Katya and I decided we wanted mussels. We strolled around the town centre until we found Het Vermoeide Model, checked the menu boards outside to confirm the presence of mussels and headed in.

Entering the restaurant was like stepping back in time. The ground floor had a small rooms with bare brick walls, a complicated looking sink to one side and a staircase heading to the first floor. The waitress asked if we wanted to eat upstairs or downstairs and since the downstairs was completely empty, we headed up to the largers, busier and warmer first floor where we were offered a table tucked away in a smaller side-room.

The waiter, a young tall floppy-haired fellow, brought us a bunch of menus; an original in Flemish with the prices and a translated menu with the food in several languages but no prices. Very cunning I thought. He took our orders for beers and cokes and left us to ponder our choices. Katya and I debated which of the three different types of mussels to go for and sipped our beers whilst Alex pondered different steak options. We were therefore pretty disappointed when the waiter returned and told us that they weren't doing mussels because they were 'on the Winter Game menu' or something like that. Now I was of the impression that the rules of eating oysters (OK so long as there's an R in the month) also applied to mussels and since they had been listed outside on the blackboards, we were a bit peeved. After a few more minutes consulting the menus, we switched our choice to a dish called a Waterzooi (which Wikipedia informs me is a classic Northern Belgian fish stew whose name means 'watery mess'). Alex stuck with his beef medallions as planned.

As we'd all chosen to forgo starters, the wait for the meal was a long one and we were onto our second beers before the food arrived. I've learned that Belgian restaurants serve large portions so starters are best avoided, but it would have been nice if they'd offered something - in fact anything - to soak up the beers whilst we waited.

When the food arrived it was well worth the wait. The Waterzooi was a large bowl containing chunks of several different types of fish in a thin creamy, fishy sauce, not unlike a thickened mariniere sauce. It was served with lots of bread to soak up the juices and was very tasty indeed. Alex's steak was cooked just as he'd requested and came with a large bowl of fries which we decided were clearly too much for one person to get through and so Katya and I felt honour-bound to help him out. Whilst I had been disappointed about not getting mussels, I would have to admit that I think the waterzooi was probably a better choice.

We didn't really need dessert after such big main courses but thought it might be rude not to, at least that's my story and I'm sticking to it. Don't expect anything 'light' on a Belgian restaurant dessert card - there was nothing that you could in anyway kid yourself was the healthy option. I opted for a tarte Tatin which thankfully turned out to be a lot more apple and a lot less pastry than I'd feared, and the others asked for Dames Blanche, which turned out to be two of the most immense ice-cream sundaes with more whipped cream than I've seen on a dessert anywhere. The over the top whipped cream was even more exaggerated with the two teas which Alex and Katya had ordered. Somewhat oddly, the teas came before the desserts and were delivered with half a dozen full sized speculaas biscuits on the side and another bowl of whipped cream. So my advice if you are full after your main course, just order a hot drink and skip the pudding as you'll get plenty of generous extras with your drinks.

When the bill came it was my turn to pay so I volunteered and was not too shocked by the cost. For three large main courses, three greedy-pig puddings, two bottles of kriek (cherry-flavoured beer), two bottles of another beer, two cokes and two coffees, the bill was a few cents over €100. A few months back before the pound devalued so badly, I'd have thought that a bargain and even now with the poor exchange rates, the amount showed up on my credit card bill at just over £90 for the three of us. Read Less

Member Rating 4 out of 5 on September 20, 2009

Het Vermoeide Model
Lijnwaadmarkt 2
Antwerp, Belgium 2000
+32 (3) 233-5261

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Ramada Plaza Antwerp

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Hotel | "OK Hotel, Shame About the Staff Attitude"

Exterior Photo - Ramada Plaza Antwerp, Antwerp, Belgium

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The Ramada in Antwerp is based in a rather striking mirrored building but delivers rather less than the sparkling exterior would suggest. I've stayed there several times and always come away thinking that just a little more effort could make this into a pretty nice hotel but I can't imagine that happening, mostly due to the rather lousy attitude of the staff.Never a smile or a welcome. On my most recent visit, I arrived by taxi from Brussels airport, squeezed myself and my wheelie-bag through the rotating door, was as always impressed by the nice looking lobby and then brought quickly back down to earth by the utter indifference of the reception staff. I waited for a ridiculous...Read More

Member Rating 3 out of 5 on September 20, 2009

Ramada Plaza Antwerp
DESGUINLEI 94
Antwerp, Belgium
32-3-2448211

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