I walked around the center and spun around in circles a few times to make sure that there was nothing that I was really missing in the region. I found a lot more shops amongst a large tangle of streets. Brussels was not designed but formed out of horse paths much like Boston or London. That much is obvious.While it was nice to look around I think I can feel safe that most of the touristy stuff I needed to do in the center of town I have managed to do at this point. It is not a very big city after all.
After a while I decided I needed to get to the Atomium which is in the northern suburbs of the city. I thought I could take a train like I had been taking to get to Vilvoorde and back but I was wrong. I had decided I would walk up to Brussls-Noord (North Station) and I would take the train from there. This turned out to be fairly well a mistake. I instead had to take the Metro back down one stop to Rogier and from there I took the blue 6 line all the way out to Heizl where the Atomium is. The ride on the blue line was over a dozen stops to get to where I needed to go. I am sure there is a more efficient way to get there but the Metro signboards and maps made very little sense to me. I figured if I was on a train that was going where I needed to I better not try to jump off until I got there. With that I arrived a bit after noon in the region and it is a short 3-5 minute walk to the actual Atomium. It was opened in 1958 if I understood the literature correctly. It cost 11 Euros to get in as an adult. There are several globes on the structure as you will see from the picture but not all of them are open. When I got inside I opted to walk upstairs and see the exhibits because I saw the line waiting for the elevator to the upper globe. My hope was that I could walk up there on my own. Unfortunately, as I said not all the globes are open and I could not get to the top. So, of course when I got back down the line for the lift was even longer. I waited patiently through it. Anyone who had reservations for the restaurant up there kept getting to cut the line which was a touch annoying for me. The top globe is basically an observatory like you might have on the Eiffel Tower or Tokyo Tower except that it is only 93 Meters tall. The real let down was that the weather had completely not cooperated and you could only see the clouds and a few feet, much like my visit to Etna. In any event I didn't stay in the upper section too long and eventually left the Atomium and headed back towards the center of town.
In doing that I hopped off at Brussels South and instead took the other trains to Brussels Central. I was not really sure what trains I should switch to on the Metro to get there. I didn't feel like spending 45 minutes to figure out the Metro enough to do it. The ride was short to Central and I walked around a bit more, this time in hopes of getting some lunch. It was basically a fair bit past lunch time by this point and I was hungry. I again stopped at an Italian restaurant. This time I ordered a set menu of minestrone soup and lasagna. The operators were speaking to each other in Italian so it may have been a real Italian restaurant. I had a Duvel to accompany the food but for a second beer I ordered a Grimbergen because I didn't much care for the Duvel. The food was good if a touch salty.
After lunch I walked around a bit more, basically doing some half-hearted souvenir shopping until I realized my bladder was going to explode. At that point I paid 3 Euros to visit the Brussels City Museum right in the middle of the Markt. It was a nice little museum that happened to have a restroom to boot. The main issue with the museum was it was in Flemish and French only. There was little to no English anywhere. So it mostly amounted to looking at the ceramics and paintings and pottery and statues and tapestries with little reference. Still it was nice and took a bit of time to get through (it is not a huge place) and you get to see the stained glass on the upper floor as well.
After the museum I decided to just head back to the hotel because I was fairly tired. In going back to the room I discovered the market near the hotel is not open on Saturday at all. I had been hoping to buy some sundries on the way in. Without being able to do that I got back to the room and watched Norway beat Denmark in the curling world championships 5-3. It was odd to see curling on TV and to see it with basically no commercial breaks unlike when it was shown on the Olympics in the US. It takes a real long time to play. The Norwegians were still wearing very noticeable plaid pants.
When that ended it was near 7pm and I made up my mind to order room service rather than find a restaurant. The reason for that being that nothing in the area of the hotel is open on the weekend. I would have to walk back to the downtown area and then back again if I wanted to eat out. Basically because Belgium is the seat of the European Union right now, the place is jam-mobbed with people on the weekdays and they all go home on the weekend. Once the business of government has been put to rest for the week they have no reason to be here and all go home. The region where my hotel is caters to these people as does the hotel itself. It was obviously much more crowded on Sunday to Thursday nights than the weekend nights. It is fine by me because I can sleep in peace on the weekend anyway.
For room service I ordered a cheeseburger and Belgian fries. Yes, Belgian fries. If you ask a Belgian they will tell you that they should be called Belgian fries because they were invented here and not in France. All the same they look like any other fry you would get, French, Freedom, whatever and taste the same. The burger was a bit more well done than I would prefer but it was tasty. I also ordered a bottle of shiraz because I know that Australian wines have resealable caps and I wanted to have a glass or two of wine and I could store what I didn't finish for use another day. The shiraz was also the second cheapest wine on the menu so I don't feel too guilty about it. After eating I opted to watch some videos and think about preparations for Sunday.
The pictures for day 8 can be found here.
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