Mini Europe

Today we managed to see all the sights of Europe at once, all at 1/25th scale!! Kristen found a place called Mini Europe, which was close to our real destination so we decided to visit and check it out. Honestly it was alot like the Lego Land cities that we saw before, but when you got up close and really looked at the details it was pretty impressive. Even down to the fat men sun bathing in their speedos.

Mini Europe from the air

Nicole made friends with the mascot



The Grande Place in Brussels in miniature and in real life

 

I took one for the team and posed in all
of the costumes

After our whirl wind tour of Europe, we made a quick trip half way around the world, and found a little slice of heaven. Wouldn't have guessed that we would find good Mexican (or at least better than that in London) in Belgium, but surprises everyday!!

From there we were on to the days highlight. The Atomium, was originally built for the 1958 World's Fair. Originally designed to stand for 6 months, clearly made an impression as its been 50+ years since originally built. Clearly they hadn't planned for the future, as there was no air conditioning, and was super hot inside.

Inside one of the escalators between pods

Riding the fastest elevator in Europe to the top pod

Taking a self portrait in my reflection.

Check out the statistics from the '58 World's Fair. (double click to enlarge) The one's at the bottom are the really interesting ones. Not sure why there were so many people giving birth there! And what is up with the suicides? Even if the 5 deaths were all successful suicides, that is a pretty sad success rate, 5 for 32, just sad!

Turns out that the creator of the Smurfs is Belgian. So with the movie coming out soon, there is smurf stuff everywhere. Wouldn't have thought that 'Smurf' was an American word, but clearly it translates differently in French and Dutch. 



Gummy Smurfs

To finish the day we visited the 'famous' frites restaurant the 'Maison Antione'. The key to frites is to fry the fries twice, and damn they were good. I couldn't bring myself to eat them with mayo but still they were great. Not sure how often I could eat them, as I nearly passed out trying to finish off my giant cone of fried goodness, but I can say that they lived up to their famous billing.