Antwerpen

The Belgian city of Antwerp - diamond centre of the world - is just an hour south on the intercity train. We spent the day there on Monday.

Antwerp has a grand railway station - an enormous, beautiful building that encourages alighting tourists to make it their first photo. Diamond and jewellery stores cluster around the station like tacky tourist traps.

The Grote Markt (Great Market) and the Onze Lieve Vrouwekatherdraal (Cathedral of Our Lady) are a twenty minute walk along an elegant shopping street.

We propped in a restaurant in the square for coffee and waffles, with whipped cream. There are some food combinations in Holland and Belgium that are mandatory. Waffles with whipped cream (slagroom) is one. In fact, anything with slagroom is pretty popular. Our cappucino arrived met slagroom - and, as we drank it next to the cathedral, it was good. Fritte met mayonaise (chips with mayonaise), served in a paper cone, is another. The act of slathering the mayo onto the chips is so ingrained in the vendor that, no matter what you order, you will need to grab their hand to prevent them globbing it on. And they are right, of course, they do go together. Its just that our Cait hasn't worked that out yet, so we must secure fritte naked.

Antwerp's cathedral is breath-taking for its architecture and its art. Indeed, displaying architecture and art has become the main function of Europe's cathedrals, with prayer relegated to small, roped-off chapels to the side. This is fine with me.  So a wander through this church is a visit to a spectacular gallery, lined with massive, symbolic paintings, sculptures and carvings, acquired over centuries. In this case, a number of  the paintings are Rubens (Antwerp was Peter's home town) and there are more cherubs than at Red Hill day care. While the art is splendid, the range of subject is necessarily limited. I felt a pang of empathy with the masters, trying to do something new and interesting with yet another rising of the cross commission.

Rome wasn't built in a day - and neither was Antwerp's cathedral - they started in the 1250s and handed over the keys about 150 years later. Along the way, the architects (not the firm, the generations) and builders also dealt with fire, wars, plague, iconoclasms and subsidence. Napoleon came later. This reminded me of our ensuite renovations.

Hugh and I left the girls at the chapel. They headed for the fashion museum, we for the diamond museum. Hugh has a nine year old's passion for gems - it is on and off, like a light switch - and he was dead keen. I had the best time. The museum does have a fantastic display of glittering diamonds in all shapes, sizes and colours and a user friendly audio guide to their production. It also has a resident diamond cutter who explains how its done. He showed us how diamonds are held while the are cut and polished in special clamps.

But the best part was a special display of the jewellery of Napoleon and Josephine Bonaparte and their court. I have never seen anything like it. Not only the baubles they wore, but also the medals and badges Napoleon used to build support and recognition for the empire - 'patriotism is the first religion of the civilized man'.

As we left, Hugh bought a souvenir, a 0.05 carat, brilliant cut Antwerp diamond. He is ecstatic. It is tiny. So tiny that, were it to be set in the front tooth of a rat, the rat would not be flash. So tiny that, when he later proudly opened the container to show Ap, it shot onto the table and vanished into thin air. There was a frantic five minute search to relocate it.

After the diamontmuseum and some more waffles met slagroom, it was time to meet Syl and Cait. The fashion museum was closed, so they had instead reviewed contemporary Belgian fashion in the winkel street.