Date:5/17/2025-5/28/2025
Destination: Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg
Goal: Coasters, Culture
Distance: 4079 Miles
Means of Travel: Flight
Potential Credits: 39
Dag 4 / Jour 4 (continued)
CW: STROBE AND FLASHING LIGHTS USED IN MANY VIDEOS IN THIS ENTRY, DO NOT WATCH VIDEOS IF SENSITIVE TO FLASHING LIGHTS
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| IMAGE DESCRIPTION: The Atomium; a tall structure of interconnected chrome spheres and gray tubes, with a Belgian flag flying atop the top sphere. |
"Let's call the 21st the Belgian Cities Day," I remember John pitching. Starting the day in Bruges, driving to Brussels midday, and eating at the Atomium that night.
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| IMAGE DESCRIPTION: A blue highway sign has arrows pointing downward, reading "Asse." |
Lol Asse.
I was whooped the second we got back to the car in Bruges, maybe it was the biking, maybe it was the late night yelling at the assholes at Boost Mobile, maybe it's just because that room in Bruges wasn't cozy in the slightest, but I was pretty tired on the drive to Brussels, even falling asleep on John towards the tail end.
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| IMAGE DESCRIPTION: A Brussels residential street, with ornate houses and cars. |
Our AirBNB (not the building pictured) was so nice! We had an apartment that was clean, had separate beds, a private shower, and even climate control! A total haves-have nots situation in comparison to last night. Our hostess spoke only Spanish and French, leaving me to have to do most of the communicating, but I got a little annoyed with this crusty old lady who yelled at us thinking we parked a car that was in her way ("la voiture vert sous l'arbre" is not a silver car parked in front of the garage). We chilled for a bit, charged our phones, and then realized we wouldn't have time to do both the Mennekin Pis and Atomium, so we headed to the Atomium before our reservations to properly explore it.
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| IMAGE DESCRIPTION: A large chrome atom sculpture rises over a hill with a pedestrian walkway. |
After packing into a lightrail and riding it to the end of the line, I saw this enormous chrome modern art pop out of the window. I knew the size of this thing, John did not, but both were taken aback by how massive it was!
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| IMAGE DESCRIPTION: Jarrett smiles in front of the Atomium across a grassy tree lawn on the square before it. |
Hello, Atomium, and hello Brussels!
The first thing we noticed was a little waffle truck, needless to say we both decided to grab a waffle.
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| IMAGE DESCRIPTION: A hand holds a waffle with chocolate and bananas in front of the Atomium. |
I'm snacking on a waffle at the Atomium, this is the most Belgian thing I've ever done.
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| IMAGE DESCRIPTION: The Atomium is made of a single sphere in the ground, six spheres and a central one at mid-level with supports holding them up on the thirds, and a final top sphere flying a black, yellow, and red Belgian flag. |
So...what is this thing? And why is it important? Who just builds a big metal science project in the Belgian capital?
The Atomium, like the Eiffel Tower, was constructed for the Expo 58 World's Fair. However, this was in a much later time period, the 1950s, and it's something straight out of an atompunk sci-fi novel. It's an artistic representation of an iron crystal scaled up a billion times, with the spheres being iron atoms. It's about 300' tall, holds a restaurant, viewing deck, an art display, a museum, and a gift shop at the base. It's like the Eiffel Tower: Cold War Edition. And it's cool as hell.
With us now having time to kill, we decided to take the trippy light up elevator to the top!
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| IMAGE DESCRIPTION: An overview of a main road up to a brutalist-styled pavilion, with a chrome sphere in the foreground. |
The top sphere of the Atomium is basically Brussels's very own knockoff Eiffel Tower. There's an observation deck, and a restaurant atop said deck. You can walk around and see all of Brussels, all of Mini-Europe, and all of the old World's Fair infrastructure.
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| IMAGE DESCRIPTION: A small park contains paths through various miniature reconstructions of European landmarks. |
Mini Europe is another attraction that's right next to the Atomium, which is exactly what it sounds like. Little models of European landmarks, we had a hell of a time trying to see what they all were from up there, particularly ones we'd been to.
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| IMAGE DESCRIPTION: A large neighborhood with a visible church steeple is in front of a metropolis of modern skyscrapers. |
You can see all of Brussels up here! I was expecting a newer, bigger Bruges from this city, but when you see how big it is from up here, it's clearly not the same thing in the slightest. We'd had a thirty minute lightrail ride through all business and residential to get here, and amid all this are Mennekin Pis square and a few royal/government buildings and that's kind of it. This city may be the Belgian capital, but it is not their cultural hub. This is where money moves and rules get made, so it's important in a very different respect.
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| IMAGE DESCRIPTION: A park with various sporting courts at the edge of a neighborhood, with a tall domed church in the background. |
There's a bit to see up here, but it's not the only point of the structure. We knew there was more, but saw chained off escalators and stairs to the lower spheres, so we just sort of chilled out until we got bored and went down.
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| IMAGE DESCRIPTION: A chrome sphere rises high over some woods, with buildings on the other side. The photo is black and white, with a single red rope running down and coiling atop the sphere. |
"If you want to check out the other spheres, head up the stairs," we were told on the way back down. Nice to know they're open when we only have one more hour after killing way to much time on that stupid skydeck!
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| IMAGE DESCRIPTION: A small 24-inch model of the Atomium of metal sits on a black square pedestal, with museum exhibits in the background against the curved wall of the sphere. |
This sphere houses a museum to the Atomium, bearing artifacts from the World's Fair and models of the exhibitions alike. John said it best, this was "At the height of US vs. Soviet Russia, let's get the whole world together right in between both nations and have a big fucking party because humanity rocks!"
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| IMAGE DESCRIPTION: Behind a glass cates sits three pieces of paper, with engineering drawings of the Atomium on them. They all show the spheres, the central drawing shows a section view showing one of the outer spheres with multiple floors inside. |
The engineering tech in me totally geeked out over these prints for the structure that they had on display!
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| IMAGE DESCRIPTION: Various pamphlets for the Atomium alongside coins, tokens, a small model, and a drink coaster behind a glass display case. |
Literature on the Atomium in Flemish, couldn't read any of it but I love how retro this stuff is.
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| IMAGE DESCRIPTION: A glass display case of the World's Fair Expo, showing a few fair rides and roller coasters on the same grounds as the Atomium and other pavilions. |
There were apparently coasters at the World's Fair too!
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| IMAGE DESCRIPTION: A model of a white building has a large silver needle-shaped structure rising from it at an angle, with cables suspending a footbridge over a water feature. |
This structure no longer stands, but I'd seen it in photos of Expo 58.
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| IMAGE DESCRIPTION: Jarrett stands smiling into the camera, before a downward escalator adorned with colorful lights. |
Alright, here's the fun part! A few of the spheres form this big awesome walkthrough light up European art thing! Those trendy art installations you see in Berlin and stuff? Some madman decided that this thing needed one!
The elevator ride into this thing to begin with is a cross between Space Mountain and an acid trip.
So each little chamber has a different thing going on with the lights and music. This was one of the first ones, and features red lights with little white ones chasing each other around.
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| IMAGE DESCRIPTION: A domed chamber has pink lights on the curved ceiling amid a lattice of steel girders. |
You can clearly tell you're inside a sphere at each little station on this exhibit. And they took full advantage of that when rigging the lights up, the contours of the chambers are half the fun!
This one had a major planetarium vibe, turning the upper hemisphere of that particular atom into a dome of twinkling stars and lights.
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| IMAGE DESCRIPTION: A dark circular room has a single colum through it, with colorful rings of light circling the room and column. |
At the center of the walkthrough, and the center of the Atomium, the central sphere has these color changing neon lights and relaxing music. It's like a chill, tranquil, meditative space amid all the flashing and acid tripping you see around the rest of this walkthrough.
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| IMAGE DESCRIPTION: Jarrett gazes at the ceiling in a circular, colorful room of blue and yellow lights. |
When you've taken one of those sketchy Sunoco Station edibles and are patiently waiting for Spongebob to appear with the secrets to enlightenment.
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| IMAGE DESCRIPTION: A wall sign describes the Echoes of Distant Lights art installation as "an immersive journey and a poetic meditation on light, space, and time." |
Echoes of Distant Lights, this was called, was a new light installation in one of the Atomium spheres that incorporated lasers.
I was standing there like an idiot for ten solid minutes watching this shit on the ceiling.
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| IMAGE DESCRIPTION: A row of red, orange, and yellow windows with a city and chromatic sphere outside, with metal structural framing in the foreground. |
And down below, they had another skydeck, though this one was more artistic and allowed you to see Brussels through colored gels forming a rainbow in the panoramic window.
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| IMAGE DESCRIPTION: A long red staircase down a silver tube. |
The only negative thing I had to say about this was that it's an accessibility nightmare. Between the flashing lights and stairs, I have a lot of disabled friends that couldn't do this for various reasons.
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| IMAGE DESCRIPTION: Jarrett smiles in a restaurant of steel shapes and colorful ceiling art. |
Afterwards, we went to our dinner reservation at the top sphere. Can now say I've eaten at both the Eiffel Tower and the Atomium! Our server was awesome and even gave us one of the tables with the best views.
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| IMAGE DESCRIPTION: A table with glasses, some flowers and a menu booklet reading "Atomium RESTAURANT" sits next to a window, showing a panoramic view of Brussels from high up. |
Anyone who goes to Hooters for the view has clearly never been to the Atomium, this is a much better view than a parking lot with some creep getting handcuffed.
That is the view they go to Hooters for, right? Or am I missing something?
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| IMAGE DESCRIPTION: The menu for the Atomium is split up by Entree, Plat, and Dessert. |
The Atomium follows the same menu format as a classical French restaurant. It's one fee and you get to pick an entree (not a US entree, an entree as like a cold salad course thing), a main, and a dessert. And it's all Belgian food! That being said, I was annoyed I couldn't get moules-frites here, as I'd seen the menu online had it, and that dish is iconic to Belgium. Maybe it's seasonal, I'm not sure, but neither Plopsaland or Bruges had it either.
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| IMAGE DESCRIPTION: A plate holds a green crema, red pepper sauce, and a patty of chopped salmon and onions topped with arugula. In the background is an Old Fashioned glass with a straw, mint, lime and cloudy liquid. The Brussels skyline can be seen out the window from high up. |
I went with the Scottish salmon tartare for my entree, and it was delicious! Kind of a Belgian poke bowl in a sense. Wouldn't have been complete without a caipirinha, the national cocktail of Brazil whose type of rum is hard to find in the US but not France.
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| IMAGE DESCRIPTION: On the same table as before sits plate with two fillets of whitefish topped with green herbs, with endives, carrots, and potatoes as garnish. |
My main dish was this Dover Sole, which I stupidly did not know came with bones. Luckily, our server cleaned the fillets for me, removing the bones in one piece, saying "See? It's easy! It's easy!" like the perfect snobby French-speaking garcon would if an American had presented this "problem."
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| IMAGE DESCRIPTION: On a slate board, two pieces of waffle sit with ice cream, a bowl of Belgian chocolate, whipped cream, and powdered sugar in the shape of the Atomium. Wine sits on the table as well. |
And for dessert? How could I not get another waffle? It was between this and the chocolate mousse, but I wanted the waffle in the nice restaurant, so I did two waffles today! They even put a little Atomium powdered sugar art garnish!
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| IMAGE DESCRIPTION: A restaurant surrounds the kitchen in a steel, hemispherical chamber, with abstract colorful 50s art on the ceiling. |
Honestly? I enjoyed the setting and the food. However, John thought we were paying for the location, and wasn't a fan of the steak thing he got. But it's still something both of us recommend if you come here to Brussels for any reason, it's an easy ride to the end of the line on the train, the museum is amazing, the skydeck has some great views of the city, and of course that light display is incredible.
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| IMAGE DESCRIPTION: Jarrett stands in front of the Atomium in a hoodie, smiling from the ground floor. |
With me stuffed as hell and never wanting to eat again, we headed out to a chilly Brussels and caught the lightrail back to our place.
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| IMAGE DESCRIPTION: A Brussels lightrail station around a neighborhood. |
After a short sunset ride back to our place, we both kind of crashed to our private rooms for the night. We had a big day tomorrow, finishing out our time in Belgium at Walibi and driving to country number ten for me!
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| IMAGE DESCRIPTION: A black and white image of the Atomium taken from below. |
"The only things Belgium has of interest are Ride to Happiness, Kondaa, beer and waffles," John had said about the culture stuff I had planned us to do in Belgium. And he was eating his words a bit as we explored Bruges via bicycle and sat there chilling in an endless display of lights into another dimension. Yes, we missed Mennekin Pis, and my dad said it was a good spot for street food and people watching, but we'd had those experiences in Bruges as well as today. But Brussels, I noticed just felt residential and vanilla in comparison to the other cities. It wasn't even "cool local spot tourists don't know about," I've seen that in other places. This just seemed like a city that was all about moving money and making laws, not showing off a beautiful culture like you can feel in Stockholm or Paris or Bruges. So we were both right, but he was right about Brussels.
Honestly, if I wasn't into coasters, I might've skipped this city knowing what it was like. But I didn't, and we did something that was absolutely incredible that I'm very happy we did. I maybe wouldn't make a whole leg out of just this, but if you have any legitimate reason to go to Brussels (other than just sightseeing, go to Bruges for that), do not miss this because it's incredible.
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| IMAGE DESCRIPTION: A tall steel roller coaster with black supports and track lifts a green train to the top, with jungle plants in the foreground. |
UP NEXT: We hit up Belgium's other park, where a fun day riding Kondaa turns into a frozen gauntlet through coaster after horrible ride! We come face to face with the tallest coaster in the Benelux in Kondaa, a frozen gauntlet run through bad coasters for credits, the funniest dark ride ever, and we run into a friend from low places!
