Brussels

We spent our last weekend at Brussels, the capital of the European Union. We travelled by Eurolines, and arrived there at about 12 a.m. on Saturday. We decided to buy tickets for Hop on-hop off tourist bus. In this way, we could see every famous attractions of the city, get off, if we were interested in a closer look, and get on again to continue the route. Just an advice: always check the maps available in hotels and in tourist buses. They can include great discounts in restaurants and museums.

I loved the royal palace. Unfortunately, it is opened to the visitors only in summer. The good thing is that there is no admission fee. It is not the place, where the royal family live, it is only like an "office" for the king.

We visited St. Michael's Cathedral. It was beautiful both outside and inside.

There was a huge crowd by the famous Manneken Pis statue. No surprise, it is one of the most popular symbols of the city. At the time of our visit he was not dressed up, but he sometimes "wears" different costumes. Here you can find a couple of examples: http://www.manneken-pis.be/galerie/

Other famous attraction of Brussels is the Atomium. It is rather far from the city centre, but definetely worth a visit. Reaching it was no problem with the Line 1 of Hop on-Hop off buses. This thing is huge, much taller than I have expected. It is 102 m.

Not so far from Atomium you can find Mini-Europe. Due to lack of time, we did not go in. By the way, it shows the famous features of each european country, just in a much smaller size: Mini Eiffel-tower, mini Big Ben, mini Berlin Wall, mini Vezuvius volcano and so on. Hungary is represented by Széchenyi Thermal Bath.

Parlamentarium was really interesting. There in no admission fee, however they pay attention to security a lot.  You have to put your jacket, jewellery and bag into a plastic case and walk through a security gate, just like in an airport. Visitors get a media guide, which is available with all of the official EU languages, including Hungarian.

The first room describes the  EU buildings in Brussels, Strasbourg, and Luxembourg. After that, you can learn a lot about the history of EU, its establishment and broadening.

                    

In an other room there are several voting-machines. You get a chance to answer to important social and political questions.You can check the results as well, and see how other visitors voted. You can also sit in a courtroom with high-tech displays.

Beside the above, Parlamentarium provides a lot of fan activities. We could easily spent a couple of hours there.

To sum up, 2 days is definitely not enough to explore every single attractions of this wonderful city, but at least, we got an insight into a little slice of Belgium.