Kitchy day in Brussels

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Today we decided to go at a more leisurely pace. after breakfast we took the Metro (subway) out to the site of the 1958 world expo.

(We haven't suddendly picked up French, and Dutch is hard to read let alone pronounce, so navigation through the Brussels under ground keeps on our toes. Fortunately we are pretty good at pattern recognition and can match up words on signs to words on maps. We have also learned a few of the practicalities. For instance, the subway car doors don't automatically open when the train stops. Whether you are getting on or off, you have to pull on the handle yourself to open the door.)

Our first stop was the Atomium. This is a gigantic model of an iron crystal. It's analogous to the Space Needle in Seattle. There is even an observation deck and a restaurant at the top. The spheres have displays of various sorts. You get from one sphere to the next through a series of stairs and escalators.

The one thing we didn't plan on was the long line and the scarcity of bathroom facilities. I was very happy to finally get to the top. Once we left the Atomium we headed over to mini Europe. This is a meandering tour of miniaturized landmarks of the EU countries. From the outside it looks like a fancy miniature golf range minus the holes. However, once we started walking through we were amazed by the encrdible attention to detail.

Later in the day we went to Quarantine. This is an escape game place. You get locked in a room and have 60 minutes to figure a way out. We were unsuccessful, but close. It was a lot of fun. It is mostly searching for various clues (for example an envelope taped to the underside of a desk drawer) and decoding messages to figure out the combination to various locks. Brendan even needed to solve a siducu.

To round out our day we ate dinner at a large McDonald's in the center of town and bought some chocolate from a local shop.

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