Day 14--Brussels

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Today we woke up early to try and find the “I Amsterdam” sign and take a picture of the Red Light District because you aren’t allowed to take pictures at night. We went to a few different parks but could not find the sign as it is not labeled on the maps that we had of the city. So we then walked over to the train station to get on a train to Brussels (we realized later that we forgot to take a picture of the Red Light District).
We arrived in Brussels around noon and headed over to our hotel—Hotel Floris Avenue. When we got there we found out that check in was not until 3pm so we had about three hours, luckily we were able to drop off our bags at the hotel. We bought some internet time so that we could find out how to get to some of the places we wanted to go.
We then headed off to Mini Europe. There are miniature sculptures of many different important and well known building from through-out Europe. There were castles and cathedrals and buildings of parliaments. There were also working parts such as trains, cars, and boats that moved around the exhibits. As the country changed there was a button you could press to hear the county’s national anthem. At the end of Mini Europe there was a an interactive exhibit where you learned about the EU.
Next to Mini Europe was the Atomium. This was built for the 1958 World’s Fair when It was held in Belgium. We went into this next. You are able to go into the different spheres of the Atomium where there are different exhibits. In one there is a Kid’s World that is limited to only groups of school kids and their teachers. There was a temporary exhibit of different comics related to the Atomium. There is a restaurant on the very to0p sphere but we didn’t go up there. Just below the restaurant is a panoramic room where you can take pictures of everything all around the Atomium. We were a little disappointed with the Atomium because it seemed cooler in the pamphlet and online.
Once we exited the Atomium we sat outside for a little while deciding what we wanted to do next. While we sat there we were listening to different Spanish music because around the Atomium there were people setting up for a Spanish festival. As we sat we also bought some Churros to eat. From there we decided to walk to Mannequin Pis. This is a statue of a little boy peeing and is very important to Brussels. There’s a legend that says that little boy peed out a fire that would have destroyed Brussels. This statue has worn over 700 different outfits through-out the years and each of the costumes has a cut out se the statue can continue ‘peeing’ into the fountain below.
All around the statue of the little peeing boy were chocolate shops. We went into a few of them and then bought some chocolate to eat later.
We were able to see part of the Grote Market from the statue and chocolate shops and decided to walk over there before heading to the hotel for check in. This market is where at certain times of the year there are flowers laid out in the square in a giant pattern. Unfortunately this wasn’t the season for the flowers to be out. In the walkway we took to enter the market area there was a statue that if you run your hand around the length of the gold it’s supposed to be good luck—so Justin and I both tried to get some luck.
We then headed over to the hotel to check in. The hotel was very nice and the room for just the two of us was as big as some of our other hostels where there were 10 beds in the room. After checking in and relaxing in the room for a little while we headed back out. We realized that we had spent the rest of our money earlier on chocolate and tried to look for a currency exchange place that might be open so we could have some cash for the Spanish festival we saw earlier. After looking at a few different places that were all closed we decided to just head over to the Atomium to see it lit up at night. We spent about an hour there walking around listening to the different music played at the many different booths—most of the music was stuff we would hear on a night out on campus.
We then headed back to the hotel to write about our daily activities and then get some sleep before our train ride for London at 7am.