Peter’s Big Day

Well, it’s finally here. The day Peter has been waiting for almost a year…. the Dana Winner concert. A little backstory. Peter discovered Dana (pronounced Donna) about 18 months ago. She is a Belgian pop singer and is amazing. Her first language is Dutch, but she often sings in English. Here is the first video he saw.

After this he was hooked and watched every video he could find. We’ve downloaded 3 of her albums and I think he even joined her fan club. Seriously, he’s a total fan geek. Yesterday we bought her a large bouquet of flowers to take to the show. I’m not sure how we’re going to get them to her, but we’ll figure something out. Maybe security can take them for us. In fact, it was the flowers that was the indirect cause of my fall. I didn’t want to carry them around all afternoon so that’s why I went back to the flat, which is why I needed to get to back to the tram, which is why I passed the scaffolding, which is why I tripped over the leg of the scaffolding. Right, so this is all Peter’s fault…I can work with that. No seriously, I fell because I wasn’t watching where I was walking.

Anyway, our epic European adventure was supposed to take place from June to mid-September but when he found out Dana was having a concert in Antwerp in October, the whole trip got turned upside down so we could attend. We’ve had tickets (the 18th row) for almost a year and the big day has finally arrived.

In addition to Dana, Il Divo is also performing. This group was formed by Simon Cowell and included a Swiss, German, Brit and an American. They’ve been together since 2003 and have a huge world-wide following. The German, Carlos Marin, died from Covid in December. This video has the other 3 founding members singing Hallelujah as a tribute to Carlos. It’s really quite moving. I almost started crying when I saw that they left his “spot” in the foursome open.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldfgPMCnaKM

In this clip, they’re speaking in Italian, but they all speak English. I have no idea what language they’ll use tonight. So, between that and Dana possibly singing/speaking in Dutch, I’m not sure if we’re going to understand a word that is said/sung but who cares. Music crosses all language barriers so it’s going to be a great time regardless. I’ll let you know tomorrow as we’ll get home too late to post again tonight.

But first we had to get to Antwerp. We had the car packed up and were ready to go a little after 9am. It was a short, 45-minute drive and we went straight to the Hampton Inn at the central train station. There is no parking, but I managed to find a temp spot so I could take the backpacks into the hotel and find out where to take the car. After parking (about a 5-minute walk from the hotel) we headed to Peter Paul Ruben’s house. Ruben was a 16th-17th century Baroque painter and is from Antwerp. He built the 3-story townhouse in 1609 and lived there for the rest of his life.

The place was crazy crowded, at least 20 people in each room and these rooms were quite small.

Rubens loved Italy and spent a lot of time in Rome. He owned hundreds of Roman statues and built this semi-circular room for his collection.

All of the artwork in the house were originals, either his or other painters. Here are just a few of the many, many paintings we saw.

There was also a small garden with a pretty courtyard.

After the house, we began the hunt for lunch. There was a bistro just down the street, but there were no seats, so we kept walking. We finally found a square with tons of restaurants, but Peter was getting tired, so we stopped into the first one we came to – a Hard Rock Cafe.

After a delicious lunch of grilled chicken sandwich (Peter) and pulled pork sandwich (me), it was off to the other side of the square where we visited the Our Lady of Antwerp cathedral. The main reason we wanted to visit was to see the 4 altar pieces that Ruben did for the church.

The church was consecrated in 1521 and has a spire that is over 400 feet tall.

After the church we took the Metro back to the central station which is across the street from our hotel. Now we’re just resting before getting ready for our big night on the town. The concert is at the sports palace, just a few metro stops so it should be an easy commute. Getting back could be another story as everyone tries to leave at once, but we don’t walk very fast so maybe by the time we get to the Metro everyone else will be gone. We can only hope.