Europe 2023, August 22

Tried a different spot for the daily run up to Park Spoor Noord at the north end of the city, a larger park although half of it was concrete. I very quickly realised you have to watch out for bikes going in all directions, it gets particularly tricky at street intersections.

For once the hotel breakfast area wasn't packed full, had a great variety that was similar to the England hotels. I wasn't in a hurry to leave the hotel as the booking for Chocolate Nation wasn't until 10:45am.

We went through the audio tour of Chocolate Nation with a group of about 10 people, it seems like they have a steady flow of customers starting the tour every few minutes. It was more interesting than I expected to hear the chocolate production story and the rooms were well put together, but it wasn't interactive at all.

Half way through there was this weird fake restaurant room with a short animated video beamed down from the roof using a projector onto the plates. Then we were back to some optional individual audio guide rooms afterwards, with some information about different chocolate end products like ice creams.

Finally at the end got to try out the 10 different chocolate varieties from white to the darkest. You get a small spoon when you enter to take around to each of the machines, I thought the ruby chocolate was one of the best. The tour went for about an hour in total, probably a bit expensive for what you get, particularly if it was a whole family ticket.

I stopped back at the hotel for a minute then set off for the rest of the day.

I started off west towards the river again to Het Steen castle, via Grote Markt. It's a nice looking small castle but now it's just a tourist information centre inside, and some poorly rated short audio tour that I didn't go on. I tried to buy a magnet but the two staff were each taking forever explaining the city to some useless tourists so I gave up waiting. I don't know why these idiots come to the city and then head down to the information centre with know idea what they want to do, surprised they even managed to find it.

Next I was off to the MAS museum, another interesting looking building. I think a small number of things are free, like the rooftop, but most you need the entrance ticket for. I didn't find most of the themed floors that interesting, in particular the floor about homes and things you have in them. The two about food and freight were a little better.

Walked back towards the city centre with a quick stop at St. Anna's tunnel. This is a long tunnel that goes under the river, since there's no bridge nearby for pedestrians strangely - ships must have priority. Like everywhere else there was hundreds of cyclists trying to use one very slow lift so I took the escalators down two levels instead - really weird old wooden escalators.

I didn't walk the whole way to the other end and out as there was nothing I planned to do over there. It looked a bit dangerous with bicycles going both ways in a narrow tunnel as well as people walking.

Picked up some dinner on the way back to the hotel to watch some more athletics. Fast food restaurant options are about the same but the drink choices are pretty limited.