Antwerp Advice

[ukpete]

wondering if anyone can help me out, i'm out on tour the beginning of october and a date has dropped out meaning that we get three days off either in antwerp or paris.

the paris bit i'm good with, antwerp not so much!

the dates off would be 11-12-13 october which is a monday tuesday and wednesday. we play antwerp the 10th and then paris on the 14th.

wondering if there are any parks that are a relatively easy travel distance (public transport only) from the city and if any will still be open that time of year.

 

thanks in advance for any help.

 

Pete

[Groteslurf]

Hehe, what do you mean ? Antwerp overrules Paris in every way

 

If I would have the time, I'd show you around the city of Antwerp or even would have driven and joined you to some themeparks. But I'm at work that week so visiting themeparks is no option for me. Meeting up and showing you around the city, might be possible depending on the exact date/time you will be in Antwerp. Where will you be staying in Antwerp ? And where will you be playing the 10th and what band are you in ?

 

About the themeparks. I indeed doubt that the belgian themeparks will be open on weekdays that week (didn't have time to check that for you).

And I'm not familiar with public transports out here, but the closest themepark to Antwerp that will definitely be open is De Efteling (40 minutes by car). If you're looking for rail connections, I guess you should look for railing to Tilburg which is the closest city to De Efteling and from there a bus. But that info will be on De Efteling website without a doubt.

 

At 2 hours by car from Antwerp, there are Phantasialand (near Köln) which certainly is open and Moviepark Germany (near Oberhausen) which I believe is also still open daily till end of October. Not the slightest idea how railconnect friendly those parks are.

 

In fact, I believe the park the easiest to reach by train out of Antwerp is in fact ....... Disneyland in Paris . While not really cheap, there is a TGV connection from Antwerp which brings you in approx 2 hours to the gates of DLP. Not sure about the departure hours nowadays, but I remember those to be quite terrible so that you had to combine it with an overnight stay. But it may have changed in the meanwhile so that a daytrip would be doable.

 

Hope this helps.

[iplf]

Just curious, what kind of tour are you doing? Which band/style?

 

I think you have 2 options:

1) Spend the 3 days in Paris

2) Visit Belgium by train for 3 days.

 

Some more info about the 2nd option.

The Belgian train-system is really good and relatively cheap if you buy a Railpass. That's a pass for 10 rides that you can sell afterwards and the price is 7.40. So a return ride would be 14.8 euro. If your band wants to explore Belgium as well, you can also buy grouptickets for a reduced fare. If you'll be doing this, just let me know by email (I'll be in Budapest the next 2 days) and I will help you out by everything. maarten_swijsen at hotmail dot com

The things I would do in Belgium

- Bruges: You could easily spend a day there walking around and enjoying the city. It's an awesome city, perfect for a day trip and easy to reach with the train.

- Brussels: Not my favourite but it's definitely an important city for Belgium/Europe. Most tourists I know like the city so I guess it's a must-do as well.

- For the 3rd day you could choose between Antwerp/Gent/Leuven. Leuven is good for a few hours, Antwerp and Gent might be cool for a day. The only themepark I'd bother visiting would be Phantasialand. You could easily do it in 1 day on a weekday when there's no holiday (in fact, we were there yesterday). You'd have to take the Thalys to Koln/Cologne and then a train and a bus or something like that. It's do-able, but not superconvenient in my opinion. But since it's off-season, it's not really a problem if you have to leave early cause you will get all your desired rides. Yesterday Black Mamba and the Winja's were a 10-minute wait max. If you visit Phantasialand, you can also spend 2 hours in Koln and check the Dom. It's an awesome and very cheap city, so combined with Phantasialand, it's a nice daytrip. There has been a topic about visiting Phantasialand with public transport on here. You might want to search for it. If it's your only option and it's the off-season, then I'd say go for it.

 

If you have any specific questions, feel free to hit me up.

[ukpete]

first off, just to clarify, i'm not actually in a band, I work in concert lighting so i'll be out on tour with The Steve Miller Band. We play the lotto arena, it's listed as antwerp on my schedule, on the 10th.

 

Sadly I don't get to decide where we get to spend our days off, the production will do that so it's more likely we'll end up in paris but having never been to antwerp before, i thought i'd ask around to see what there was.

thanks for replying guys, as soon as I know where we'll be getting time off i'll drop you both an email.

 

thanks

 

Pete

[iplf]

Thanks for the clarification. I thought you were in a midsize band maybe with just a few crewmembers and more unorganised free time.

If you're in Paris, make sure to check Jardin D'Acclimatation. It's an amazing kiddiepark easy reachable with the Paris subway. You pay per ride and a small fee to enter the park. I believe TPR also visited this park so you can find it in the park index.

Here's the parkwebsite:

http://www.jardindacclimatation.fr/

And it's open in October.

This is not really a tourist location so you'll find a lot of locals there, when the weather is nice. Trust me, you really want to visit this cute park .