As my train pulled into the station at Antwerpen Berchem, my lovely friend Sylvie greeted me with open arms. It was great to see her after a long day travelling by train.

Sylvie had come to my high school as an exchange student years ago and I had been threatening to come visit her for years, finally our time had arrived and I was very excited to be in Belgium; the country best known for chocolate and waffles, and perhaps politics, if you are into that… I will take the chocolate!

We soon arrived at her beautiful home, she shared with her partner Karl. It was my first time meeting him, and I was very impressed with his well dressed style, accomplishments and ability to cook amazing food! Throughout my time I sampled his delicious vegetarian paella, raspberry sorbet, and I did an excellent and very thorough job of polishing off all his homemade meringues! A man that can cook, seriously that is very attractive! So all my man readers out there, bake up a storm for your lovely girlfriends or wives and you will be very loved and adored!

Our first day out together we looked all around Antwerp, across the river and through the south. We meandered around quaint little cobble stone streets and walked in and out of many shops. I was very impressed with the quality of bookstores and interior furnishing shops. Plus all the great clothing stores, shoes, leather handbags, and so many nice things I wanted to buy buy buy! But…life of a traveller I am confined to the size of my suitcase. So I bought little things, like earrings, and socks, super essentials right?

Now I could dedicate a whole post to Begium chocolate! But I will confine it to a paragraph…I fell in love with the delicious array of dark chocolate here, of a very fine quality. Praline is also very popular here, so of course I had to try it. My favourite became a dark praline covered in white chocolate. Yum! Lucky really my stay was not any longer, I nearly ate my body weight in chocolate!

My next post I will tell you all about Bruge. And put in some chocolate pictures I promise!

I also had a sauna. Sylvie has an actual sauna on the top floor of her apartment! How awesome is that!? I was all naked and lasted for two 15 minute sessions, with a cool shower in between. It was nice. Bit weird, but nice.

Stay tuned and take a look at my Facebook page ‘Live your truth’ www.facebook.com/anitaozo where I post footage of the amazing places I travel to, and other inspirational messages. I also have a page for bloggers to share their stories, a place to collaborate, learn and share! Come along for a look and join our page, Blog Share and Blogging Events.

Anita xx