First Site Visits in Antwerp!

Friday was filled with more classes. This time we were in a different classroom at the University. Below is the view out of the window. Gorgeous. We had half of a day of class and then went on our first site visits. 

This picture looks kind of creepy… but I was trying to get a photo of what our classrooms look like. They're nothing very special.

I headed back to our hotel to drop my backpack off before we went on the site visit so that I wouldn't have to go through the trouble of putting it in a locker. On the way back I picked up this beauty. It was as good as it looked.

While we were waiting to get our tickets I was looking at the brochures for the museums and I came across this one. Europeans think highly of us.

This was the house of Peter Paul Rubens. It is actually only a picture of half of his house. Rubenshouse is composed of two different types of architecture. This here is Flemish however the other side is Baroque.

I apologize for the quality of these photos. I didn't think we would be able to take pictures so my camera was sitting in my room. Learned my lesson there.

Ruben's bed. It was tiny because they didn't sleep with their legs stretched out because of their diets at the time..

Looking out from his porch. The porch wasn't actually used as a place to sit but rather where he would hang drying paintings.

His workshop. Our tour guide said that Rubens would sit at the top of the stairs looking down onto this room while he worked. 

I was trying to take a photo that would illustrate how massive these photos are.

Our tour guide was the man.

Ruben's garden. Looking back towards his house.

From here we left to go to St. Paul's church. 

This is the major shopping street in Antwerp and one of the largest streets through the city. I learned my bearings based off of this.

Our Lady of Antwerp Cathedral

The square

St. Paul Church. It's like I'm back at home!

This is the most beautiful church I've ever seen. I'm hoping I'll be able to go back later with my better camera. 

These are the confessionals along the left aisle. Above you can see the 15 mysteries of the rosary all painted by famous Belgian painters. 

Veronica. You can see the face of Jesus in the cloth. 

Mystery painted by Rubens. One of the security men in the church had taken an unclose picture of this painting when it was being transported. Our tour guide didn't like that he was butting in but it made the painting that much more impressive. The painting is of Jesus falling under the cross and making eye contact with his mother. 

The grotto outside of St. Paul's. People would take pilgrimages to come here. There were over 1,000 bishops buried in this mass grave. 

We walked for about 4.5 hours that day and it was exhausting. We had one more class at the end of the day and then headed back to the hotel to finish up some homework. 

Emily