Two weeks after London, another great flight deal appeared, this time from Ryanair. Brussels for €5. Originally booked for 9 people, but our group eventually reduced to 7. Still, it was a lot of fun 🙂 We tasted excellent Belgian beer Kriek and amazing chocolates. We experienced a bit of a new culture, but most importantly, we relaxed well.
Contents
Day 1 – Arrival in Brussels and beer tasting
Day 2 – Atomium, Mini Europe, Grand Place, and Berlaymont
Day 3 – Basilica of the Sacred Heart
Day 1 – Arrival in Brussels and Beer Tasting
We arrive at Charleroi airport on Thursday at 14:50. We purchase roundtrip bus tickets for 22€ and the journey to Brussels takes about an hour. During the ride, we fortify ourselves with Becherovka. The bus drops us off at the South railway station. From the station, we continue by metro, which takes us directly to our accommodation – Hello Hostel. Our initial impression doesn’t quite give us the vibe of a modern European city or the center of the European Union, but perhaps this is just due to our fatigue. We check in, have a meal, relax, and head out for a tasting of Belgian beer. Here, we encounter Belgian beer Kriek for the first time.
TIP: Kriek is often wrongly labeled as a ladies’ beer, but it can quench your thirst very well. Be sure to try it 😉
Day 2 – Atomium, Mini Europe, Grand Place and Berlaymont
We wake up to a beautiful sunny day. After having a hearty breakfast, we head north to our first stop, the famous Atomium. We get off at Heysel metro station and take photos from a distance with this huge monument. It was possible to take the elevator to the individual spheres, but we just admire it from the outside and from a nearby park.
About a 5-minute walk from Atomium is Mini Europe park (entrance fee: €12.90). In Mini Europe park, you can tour Europe in a few hours. There are 350 models and animations of significant buildings and technical monuments from 70 locations of European Union states. The models are made in a 1:25 scale and are detailed to the smallest features. Representing Slovakia is the Blue Church. Each building has a button to play the national anthem. At the end of this exhaustive tour, we recharge on a bench with our homemade snacks.
We enter the subway heading towards the city center. We grab a cup of coffee at Starbucks and since we didn’t have a bottle opener for the beer, we bet on the first homeless person we encountered 🙂 It was clear that he had experience in that. We wander through the streets of the center and try to find the comic book characters on the walls of buildings, which we eventually succeeded in. Next, we come across the statue of a urinating boy Manneken Pis. We were somewhat disappointed because it was much smaller than one would expect.
Right around the corner, we discover a shop selling Belgian chocolate. They offer us a special deal of 4 for 2, which didn’t quite appeal to us as much as 5 for 3, but we didn’t buy it 😀 After about 200m, we arrive at the historic Grand Place square. We take a panorama photo and admire the historical town hall in Gothic style.
From the square, we continue towards the Royal Palace Royal Palace and Brussels Park.. We take a walk and at the corner of the park we hop on the metro. We are going to visit the Berlaymont, the seat of the European Commission, and the most eager ones even manage to visit the European Parliament. The rest are waiting at a nearby pub, and if I were to announce another item on today’s agenda, they would probably stone me. Tired, we return to our hostel. Evening beer, finishing up the supplies in the room, and off to bed.
Day 3 – Basilica of the Sacred Heart
In the morning, we visited the Basilica of the Sacred Heart, which was a short walk from our hostel. The weather was overcast and rain was looming. We explored the basilica from the inside and then smoothly moved by metro to the station. Boarding a bus, we headed back to our Charleroi airport. The journey back passed by as swiftly as always.
