Brussel[sprouts]

Walking through a park in Brussels I kept seeing these really weird ball statues. I thought they were tennis balls and did not understand the artistic appeal. A few days later I finally realized that they were Brussels sprouts!!!

After a nice day in Brugge, we headed to Brussels, the capital of Belgium AND of the European Union. It was a lot warmer than we expected, and we were grateful. We took the train right into central station and began exploring around. Our first destination was the statue of the peeing boy, pictured below.

He was much tinnier than I thought he would be. I'm not really sure why he became so famous. He has several outfits that he rotates through. Today it was just him though. You can read more about him here.

As a scientist, I was very excited to go see Atonium! The massive structure forms a unit cell of an iron crystal magnified 165 billion times. It was built for the world fair in 1958. Here is the history. We then followed 3 different self guided walking tours that took us past the main sights and parks. One part of the tour took us to the EU headquarters! "Just follow the lights" was our motto when there was no more walking tours to do. We would just see something pretty in the distance and walk to it, then look for something else interesting. We ended up going way off the map...eventually we found our way back to the main pedestrian walkway and enjoyed a Belgium waffle!

Christmas spirit was everywhere in Brussels too. The Christmas market was 100x larger than in Brugge. There was a giant ferris wheel, 2 carousels, a massive ice skating rink, and endless food drink and gift booths.

 The highlight of the night was the epic light show in town hall square. When we were here earlier in the day we were very disappointed because it appeared that they were still constructing the large Christmas tree, since it was covered with scaffolding and sheets. To our surprise that was the final product. By night is was transformed into a projection screen that lit up to correspond with Christmas music. The lights on the surrounding buildings were also included in the light show. I was very very pleased. For the video, check my facebook page.