Taking the Kids to Antwerp, Belgium

We spent about 24 hours in Antwerp and I wish we could have spent at least two days. What an incredible city! We had a long list of things to see and do and I knew we would not be able to accomplish everything, so I decided that each of us would choose a museum and those would be our morning activities. 

Aurelia's choice was the ModeMuseum, a fashion museum. I thought it was a bit of an odd choice and actually tried to talk her out of it, but in the end it was such a fantastic museum! We walked in and the lovely front desk lady handed each child a set of pencils and the "treasure hunt." Turns out the museum has clues all over the museum and kids can hunt for them (while learning a bit of the history of Belgian fashion) and at the end there is a treasure box!

I was not allowed to take photos in the actual museum, but the kids had so much fun collecting each clue. The clues were related to a number and at the very end that number was needed to unlock the treasure box. I was a bit taken aback when we finally discovered the treasure box--it was locked and so secretive! How fun is that?! The museum is quite small and it took us about an hour to see everything and collect the answers to the clues.

 Next stop: The Museum aan de Stroom. The museum was a twenty minute walk through the city, so we were able to see a few sights on our walk over, which was perfect. The building itself is pretty fantastic and the kids could have just marveled at the view from the foyer, hahah. We chose a few of the most interesting sounding exhibits and spent about an hour and a half in the museum. Things were not as interactive, so Aurelia reached her limit after this time. Older kids could definitely spend a few hours in here.

 My choice of museum was the Red Star Line Museum. This museum was super interactive, which was great. It tells the story of the Europeans who left Europe via Antwerp and sailed to North America (USA and Canada). We learned about immigrant families from the past and current families and there were recorded stories and photos and videos--super informative and we all enjoyed this museum. I forgot to take photos, whoops!

 We spent the rest of the day wandering around the city and exploring churches, shops, small squares, etc. This is such a great city and I am sorry we couldn't spend more time here.

 Antwerp is a compact city and kids can really walk everywhere, which is great. We probably walked over 10km on this day (with breaks for food and such). There are public transport options as well, but we were happy to walk and explore.