Mini Europe and The Atomium

We spent our first full day in Europe riding the train from London to Brussels. Brussels is the capital of Belgium. We were staying 2 nights in Belgium, so that meant we would have a full day there. My mom had seen an article called “What to do with 1 day in Brussels” so we used it to help us find out what to do. We decided to pick a few things from the list. There were 2 things in the article that stood out. One was Mini Europe and the other was the Atomium.

The next day we took the subway to Mini Europe. Mini Europe is a park where there are little models of most of Europe’s famous landmarks. When we walked in we took a picture with the mascot. The mascot was a turtle, but he had orange skin and a blue shell. The weather was not very pleasant, so we all put on our raincoats. There were on and off showers the entire time we were there, but it was still lots of fun. We followed the path to the first models, which were of viking settlements. There were so many models and they were all really detailed. Some of my favorites were The Eiffel Tower, The Leaning Tower of Pisa, and Big Ben. The Eiffel Tower was by far the tallest thing there. Every model was supposed to be 1/25th of the actual landmark, but the Eiffel Tower was still taller than a 2 story building. The Leaning Tower of Pisa was actually made out of marble. There was a little model of Galileo doing his famous gravity experiment on the tower. Big Ben was with the British Parliament building and the entire thing looked incredible. All the details on Big Ben alone were amazing. There was a lot of gold at the top of the tower which made it shine in the gloomy day. Another really cool model was of a Finnish Castle which had a dragon on it. There was also a guy that you could make climb up a ladder to get the princess. If someone else pressed a button, the dragon would breathe smoke on the princess, and the man would fall back down the ladder. It was pretty cool how you could see all these landmarks in just 1 hour!

After we explored Mini Europe we walked over to the Atomium. It was right next door, so it wasn’t hard to get to. It’s also a massive structure in the sky which made it very easy to find. The Atomium was made for the Brussels World Fair in 1958. The structure is the edges and vertices of a 3 dimensional cube made out of shining metal. We walked inside of the bottom ball and waited in line to take the elevator to the top. The guy at the bottom said it was a 22 second ride, but it felt much quicker. Unlike when we went up the Space Needle, this elevator was inside a big pipe so we couldn’t see anything. When we got to the top we went and looked out the windows. We could see the entire Mini Europe from up there. That wasn’t the only thing we saw. We had a great view of King Baudouin Stadium which is where the Belgium National Football (Soccer) Team plays. The cloudy day made it hard to see far, but we were still able to see most of Brussels. The views weren’t even the best part of the Atomium though. When we went back down the elevator we found out that there were some exhibits we could go to. The first few weren’t that exciting, they were mostly about the history of the Atomium. All of it changed when we went up an escalator though. The escalator was through one of the tubes that connect the corner spheres so it was very long. The best part was it was completely dark except for some LED lights. They were moving and changing colors to the beat of some music playing pretty loudly. I thought it was really cool. When we reached the top of the escalator we were in another dark room with lights. It was even cooler than the escalator. We didn’t stay in the room as long as I would have liked though because one of my accomplices was freaking out. There were a few other rooms but there wasn’t much in them. When we got back to the bottom I bought a mini model of the Atomium to bring home. 

We were all pretty hungry after we left so we decided to get some frites (Belgian French Fries) with curry sauces. I thought I wouldn’t like the sauces, but they were really delicious. We got 2 cones of frites to share, and they were gone pretty quickly. The frites were a great way to end the great day. I think that was probably my favorite day of the first week of our trip. 

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