Comparison and some words

It's been a while since I typed more than 5 words, so I thought this might be a good time to give some more updates on the progress so far. The last few sessions I worked on the river Schelde. Also this turns out to be a huge job, since landscaping isn't that easy.
The steps I took:

1. Measure the distance between Rubens and the border of the river (which is called De Blauwe Steen, the blue stone) using Google Earth
2. Measure the distance between the front entrance of the Cathedral and the border of the river
3. Mark those two points with a beacon
4. Draw a line between those two points with stone 

This is the result:

To give you an idea: Rubens is at 279/203, the beacon is at -221/203, which means the distance between Rubens and the border of the river is 500 blocks.

The river itself is at that point about 363 meters HORIZONTALLY wide (so measured along the X-axis, not the straight width from bank to bank), according to Google Earth. This is a bit of a pity, because you cannot see 363m far in MC vanilla (unless you go higher, or you adjust your video settings). I can assure you, when you stand on the left bank (called Linkeroever) at that point, you can very clearly see the Cathedral. This is in fact one of my favorite views on the city.

Another awkward thing is the amount of work. All the jungle trees need to be cut/blown up/shred to pieces, the water level needs to be made equal (a huge job with buckets), the river must be at least 6 blocks deep, and I can assure you this is not simple for a river that is 360 blocks wide. Calculate quickly: 360 blocks wide * 6 blocks deep * 1500 blocks long for the significant part of the river = 3.240.000 blocks to remove. Ouch ...

Another thing I have been looking at is something to give me an idea on how accurate my work is. I found a great tool for this, CraftMaster. I still need to figure out what you can do with it, because it has tons of options, but I was already able to make a screenshot of the total. These are the AntwerpCraft version and the Google Earth version, side by side:

Some things you might immediately notice:

• IRL the Cathedral is not straight, but at an angle of about 10 degrees. Yeah, I know ... I so badly wanted to make it straight, because it looks sooo much nicer in MineCraft.
• In the MC version, there's a large grey strip running from the Groenplaats to the river Schelde. This is what I call Construction Boulevard. I want to outline the buildings as quickly as possible in this area, so I can start erecting more houses in the inner city, and walk from the Groenplaats to the Noorderterras (a nice panoramic terrace right beside the river).

Last thing worth mentioning is a new building I created on the Groenplaats, the old Postal Office, which is now called Mercado. Mercado is a brand new indoor marketplace for all kinds of exotic food. Here you see it, it's on the left:

The white modern building next to it is my old high school. At the ground floor, there's an entry to the metro station. The building on the right has offices on the ground floor, and apartments on all other floors. I once visited some friends in those apartments, nice places.