I left Brugges once I woke up and walked back to the train station, this time it was physically snowing on me which was kind of cool but kind of annoying at the same time. By the time I got the train, arrived in Brussels and worked out how to get to my hostel on their very average metro system it was lunchtime.
I decided to make the most of the day as I only had one night in Brussels and needed to leave around lunchtime the following day to get a train to Gare de Midi then bus to Charleroi Airport (about an hour from Brussels) to be at least two hours early for my flight to Pisa.
I got on the metro that I thought was heading to the Atomium, which it was but it was doing a huge loop first, after a few stops I decided to get off the train and try to find the one going in the opposite direction as it would get there a lot quicker and by this stage I was starting to get pretty hungry.
The Atomium is about a 5minute walk away from the Heysel train station although pretty easy to get too as you just look up until you find it and walk in that general direction. The tickets are pretty steep at 11Euro and don’t bother with the audioguide as mine was in French even though I asked for English so was a waste of 2Euro.
It was pretty cool though to begin with you head straight up the middle Atom too the highest one and you can get a 360degree view of the surroundings and it looks down onto EuroLand (might not be what it’s called) where you can see a mini Eiffel Tower, Big Ben, Leaning Tower of Pisa etc – this was kind of cool to look down on them covered in snow I must admit.
Afterwards you get to go into each of the Atoms through a series of stairs and escalators which was kind of weird but cool at the same time.
Next I headed for the most central looking train stop (central in terms of sights) and found my way to the Grand Market and the Manken Pis Statue (Prob not it’s actual name, is something like that). The Grand Market is a square in the middle that is empty and is surrounded by heaps of old buildings which are all pretty incredible, the town hall is located here as is a museum that looks kind of dark and gothic and led me to another Wow moment where I said wow outloud when I saw it (the pictures do not do it justice).
The statue along with the Atomium are apparently what the Eiffel Tower is to Paris for Brussels, national icons. The statue is a tiny statue of a boy peeing into a fountain, I’d heard about it before so thought I better check it out since I was so close and almost missed it as it was a tiny tiny statue!
Right across from the statue they were selling 1Euro Waffles so I thought I better give them a try as well and it was pretty amazing, although quiet sweet. Am not sure if it was so amazing as I’d only managed a cheeseburger that was very average at about 3pm so was pretty hungry and cold by this stage.
Today I got up and went back near town to check out whatever else I could in the couple of hours I had before having to get back to the hostel to get my bags and make my way to the airport. I managed to find an awesome looking Cathedral and ended up back at the Grand Palace and generally just wandered around some random streets for a while which was quiet nice.
It was a bit warmer today which was nice so you wern’t shivering the whole time, although the wet feet really gets annoying quick from the snow and walking a bit retardedly so you don’t slip over in the snow takes a lot of effort so fingers crossed today is the last day of snow for this trip!
Turns out I was pretty early for my flight and the bag drop only opens two hours beforehand so I had a bit of time to kill, now you get blog posts at least! The airport is quiet small but being that it only serves the budget airlines I am not surprised and it is quiet new, I’m pretty sure its a new terminal. They have a couple of places to eat here and even a tiny supermarket that has wide rows so you don’t knock stuff over with your backpack. They sell lots of prepackaged salads and breads and bits and pieces so I grabbed lunch from here as dinner will likely be either Pizza or Pasta in Pisa!