Whirlwind trip to Brussels

---

I did quite like it here even though it is not the most exciting place in the world and has a bad reputation in Europe for being a bit of a hole. I spent most of my day up in Heysel which is on the outskirts of the city but has a nice large park, and Brupark! which is a complex that has a water park, cinemas and Mini-Europe which is quite possibly the tackiest thing I have ever seen. It has all the major landmarks of Europe but at 1/25th of the size. My camera ran out of batteries while I was halfway through Mini-Europe so there are no photos of my early evening where I went into the city centre and saw Grand Place, which is quite amazing, a huge square surrounded by cool big old buildings. I did get a photo of the miniature version of this though to make up for it. I also saw Manneken-Pis which is a nice statue/fountain of a boy peeing. I am sure you will manage to survive without seeing a photo of this.

One of the cool things about the city is that the escalators are stopped unless someone is standing on them, which meant I thought they were all broken at first, and it is a little freaky when they just start up under you. All signs are written in French and Dutch which can be a little confusing as I often only saw half of a sign and thought I was in a completely different place, instead of it just being in Dutch.

---