One of the fun things about hotels is trying to work out the many forms of shower systems they have. This one had one of the split system models, where the water initially comes out of the bath tap and you have to pull up a knob to make it switch over to the shower. There was another trick to this one which I didn't know at the time, that even if you pulled the knob up, it wouldn't switch over to shower unless there was enough water flow running through the system, i.e. turned on at least half way. So, getting frustrated with this system, I managed to pull the knob completely off the tap, causing water to come out in all directions.
My first challenge of the day was to purchase a return train ticket on the suburban train system to get to Musee Herge. It worked out ok, since I had everything written down, but at the last minute they changed the platform and I almost missed it. While on the train to the museum the weather got even worse. Through the night there had been thunder and lightning but now there was also heavy rain followed by hail - probably similar weather that caused the Pukkelpop music festival to be cancelled the weekend before, but not before five people died (lucky I decided not to attend).
By the time I reached my stop an hour later the rain had settled down a lot, only all the streets in this little town were flooded. This Louvain-La-Neuve Universitie place is a strange town, it has been built above road level and so there is no traffic. Seems like they just forgot to plan for adequate water dispersal. The museum was pretty cool when I got there. No photos were allowed inside, and the artwork was mostly in French, but there was plenty of English descriptions to accompany it and a free audio guide was provided. Good value for money.
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| Herge! The Adventures Of Tintin! |
After getting back to Brussels I used the slightly more user-friendly city metro trains to get to the Atomium structure. This looks pretty cool, and was used for some kind of expo, but I didn't see the need to go up to the top. Next to it was a Mini Europe park which had somehow received good reviews but I was quite sceptical of. Since I had time to spare I went anyway, but probably should not have bothered. They have created miniature structures of all the countries in the European Union, but it was just wasn't very interesting for me.
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| Shiny atomium, if you look closely you can see a hydrocarbon compound. |
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| Mini Grand Place. |
To finish off the day I walked back through Cinquantenaire (Jubelpark) to the hotel, in the middle they have some "triumphal arch" like almost every other city I expect to visit.
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| Slightly bigger and more real Grand Place again. |
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| Jubelpark. |
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