Wednesday, April 17
The fifth day of our grand tour was definitely the most intense and fast paced of any day. We all felt this from the moment we woke up this morning before 6:00. After waking up we had breakfast and listened to some announcements before packing our bags with our formal attire, which is the attire we wore for our Christmas Concert last year. We hopped on the bus at 7:15 and set out for Antwerp, Belgium.
Our time in Antwerp began with a city tour. We saw a plethora of buildings and statues during this tour as well as learned about the history of Antwerp. Some of the coolest things we saw were the Our Lady of Antwerp Cathedral and the statue of Silvius Barbo, a mythical Roman soldier and founder of Antwerp. The statue I found most interesting was of the Belgian folklore character Lange Wapper.
After the tour we had lunch at De 7 Schaken where many of us tried black pudding for the first time. Sadly, our lunch was cut short due to our tight schedule, so we weren’t able to enjoy all the food to the fullest extent. After lunch, we changed into our formal attire and did a collaborative concert with the children’s choir of the Our Lady of Antwerp Cathedral. The concert went very well, and I must say, the children’s choir was outstanding.
We then proceeded to go to the Chocolate Nation Museum. While there, we learned about how chocolate is made and sampled some of the chocolate flavors they had. My favorite was the fruity Ruby Chocolate, the unique fourth form of chocolate (after dark, milk, and white) which was only discovered in 2017. After our sampling session, we all purchased our fair share of Belgian chocolate, and in one case, an accidental purchase of chocolate scented soap. We all left Chocolate Nation very happy and boarded the bus back to our hotel in Delft, Netherlands.
We arrived back in Delft around 8:00 p.m. and finally had time to get dinner. Dinner tonight was more freeform, with all of us breaking off into different groups and restaurants around Delft. My group headed for ramen but got to the restaurant too late and ended up at McDonalds. The other group got Italian. Two of our students went on a double date with two of the girls from the Stanislas College that we visited yesterday. This was a fun and relaxing night and a great way to end a very busy day.
William Remley ’25
BC High Concert Choir 