Mini-Europe, Atomium, the Grand Platz, and the Rain. Mostly the Rain.

Hi All,

When we arrived at our hotel at 7:00 in the morning, the somewhat grouchy (but maybe just aloof, non-morning European) lady at the front desk informed us that there would be no rooms available for several hours.  So, not wanting to waste time, we glanced at a map and took off for the metro.

Rather than noticing the metro stop 50 feet in front of the hotel, we walked a few blocks in the direction that our taxi driver had pointed us.  To a tram station.  Not, as it turns out, the same thing.  But there were several people sleeping outside in tents, so that's something.  After we got our bearings, we walked back and found the metro stop by our hotel, went down, and hopped on the number six line to do what we considered to be probably the height of awesome tourist activities.  We were on our way to Atomium and Mini-Europe.

This is what we found when we got there:

That, my friends is Atomium.  A description will follow, but please note the impending rain and complete and total lack of other people.  Because Mini-Europe opened at 9:30 and Atomium opened at 10:00, we headed over to Mini-Europe.  Got there around 9:00.  No one was there.  No one.

So, it's a Saturday morning, in the summer, and there are exactly zero people at what seems to be a reasonably popular tourist attraction.  Granted, within the next 10-15 minutes, it was actually raining pretty hard.  But still, we weren't sure what to make of that.  At around 9:25 a girl showed up, got things organized, and opened the gate so that we could buy tickets.  She seemed pretty surprised to see us, and didn't really give us any hint as to what we were about to encounter.  Which was totally awesome.

Mini-Europe is a series of models of major European landmarks.  They're made meticulously to a scale of 1:25.  It really was like touring all of Europe in a day.

Seriously, they really had pretty much everything.  Best parts:

• It was totally interactive.  They had buttons that you could push to hear the national anthem of each country, knock down the Berlin Wall, and make the Dutch windmills turn.  They also had a lot of little games that you could play.  For example, in the France section, they had a Mona Lisa heist set up.  Troy was the robber, and I was the police, and we both had to run in place on a special mat.  I caught him, and the Mona Lisa was safe.
• The Romania section featured Dracula!
• We were literally the only ones there for the majority of our visit (and at some point the rain tapered off some).

(Note the Charlotte love (and lack of weather-appropriate clothing))

After learning more about the spirit of cooperation that forged the EU, it was on to Atomium.  Atomium was built as the showcase structure of the 1958 World Fair.  According to placards inside, architects were generally unimpressed, but the public went wild :).  We were able to go in to four of the electrons, via a series of elevators, stairs, and escalators.  And we had a lovely view from the top :)

Most of the exhibits talked about what went into hosting a world fair (300 multi-lingual hostesses, dressed in red blazers and blue skirts, who both were coy and coquettish) and some of the scientific advances that were being presented.  The permanent exhibition also included a really neat light (and somewhat trippy) light show in one of the spheres that was set to music, and supposed to make us think about artificial intelligence and what would happen if it were to get out of control (that was on a plaque after the light show... I missed the memo until then).

After leaving Atomium, we grabbed lunch near Mini-Europe and headed back to the hotel, where we were able to check in a little after 1:00.  We fell asleep almost immediately.  When we finally got moving again several hours later, we were excited to see blue sky, and headed off toward the Grand Platz, to see what it was all about.  We got there just as the Belgium-Argentina World Cup game was beginning.  While it was cool to be walking around in the midst of that (there were a lot of restaurants that had it on with crowds outside), I was a little underwhelmed by the lack of general pandemonium.  Oh well.  We found a nice place to sit outside and have dinner, and just as we were finishing up, it started raining again.  Surprise!  Oh well.  

Tomorrow we're off to eat waffles and visit Parliament.  There's also apparently a comic book trail around here (we think we may have met TinTin at Atomium), so we may venture off in search of that.

Such a fun day!

Catherine