Capital cities

Having been inspired by several of Olof's siblings, we thought it would be fun to see how many European capital cities we could visit while on our European adventure. Thus we recently made the short trek to Brussels - the capital of all capital cities in a sense, the meeting of minds for the European Union.

Cities have a lot to offer for tourists. There is always some new food to discover, an alley way to wander down, a museum, pub or famous statue to be visited. In Brussels it is the Manikin piss and Cafe Delirium. And of course waffles. All of which we did in about 3 hours of our visit on a rainy Saturday afternoon.

The kids asked, "What is Brussels famous for, like Amsterdam has Anne Frank's house and canals. What can you buy?" Funny that that is their point of reference. I had to think. Waffles. Beer. Cheese. I could only come up with food, so we had to go find the waffles right away. And on every street corner, there was a lovely little waffle stand, offering delicious warm waffles. So worth the visit already.

Okay, next was the famous peeing statue. Really, literally it is a small, 2 foot statue of a boy peeing. He gets dressed in different outfits according to the season, but he is still just small boy peeing. Nothing to buy there.

And the famous beer. Not really so much for the kids, but we did need to stop for refreshments and happened on the VERY smoky Cafe Delirium which offers over 500 varieties of beer. I had read that Brussels had outlawed smoking in restaurants, but did not realize that cafes did not fall into the same category. I think every smoker in Brussels joined us at this cafe/pub to get in all the smoking they could, in the smallest space possible. Just another cultural experience for the kids. The beer was good.

And on we walked in the beautiful and strangely contradictory city with beautiful intricate buildings from the 1800s and new soviet bloc type administrative buildings side by side.

The drizzling rain did not stop our explorations, but nor was conducive to long explorations. We were happy to get back to the hotel after an early dinner and swim in the hotel pool, which was really the main attraction for the kids.

The next day we avoided the 23 Euro hotel breakfast (over 30 dollars, per person!) and wandered to the nearest bakery. A much nicer and more local experience for us. We took a long walk through the royal gardens and were happy to get back to the car for the next tourist attraction, the Atomium.

I had never heard of the Atomium before, but now I will always associate it with Brussels. This is an amazing structure that was built for the 1958 world fair. "At 102 meters high, with its nine interconnected spheres, it represents an elementary iron crystal enlarged 165 billion (thousand million) times." In other words it is awesome - and totally worth a visit. Both kids said it was something that they would never forget (until they do of course). It was a very memorable way to end our little trip to yet another capital city in Europe.