There are so many different things to do and see while on a trip to Belgium. Somewhere we hadn’t planned on visiting was Mini Europe, Brussels but it turned out to be one of our favourites. Make sure you read on to find out why this should be at the top of your must-visit list if you’re heading to Brussels.
Where is Mini Europe?
Address:
Bruparck – 1020 Brussels (Laeken)
+32 2 474 13 13
info@minieurope.eu
How to get there
By car:
There is a car park just outside of Mini Europe meaning it’s only a short walk away. This is in a low emissions zone though so be sure to check and register your car to avoid a €150 fine. More information on the LEZ
Public transport:
Heysel (5 min walk)
- Metro 6
- Tram 7
- Bus 14 and 83
Stade (10 min walk)
- Tram 9 and 51
- Bus (De Lijn) 240, 241, 242, 243, 250, 251 et 260
Saint-Lambert (15 min walk)
- Tram 19
With Toot Bus:
Blue line, stop 5 – Atomium
– From stop 5 at the Atomium, walk 5 min. to reach Mini-Europe.
By train:
At the Brussels South station take the metro 6 direction “Roi Baudouin”, get out at the second to last stop “Heysel” and follow the Mini-Europe indications.
Tickets
Mini Europe has a few different options when it comes to buying tickets. You can buy singular tickets solely for entrance to Mini Europe, where prices (correct as of December 2022) are as follows:
Adult – €17.30
Child – €12.30
(Only valid for children younger than 12 years old and taller than 115 cm)
Another option is to buy muti-tickets which cover the entrance to Mini Europe, Atomium and the Design Museum, all valid on the same day.
Opening times
The opening hours change depending on the time of year. In the high season, the opening hours are longer while in the low season there are short hours. The last entry is always 1 hour before closing and it’s best to check the website for current opening hours.
What is Mini Europe?
Mini Europe is an amusement park of sorts, showcasing some of the most amazing parts of the European Union, and United Kingdom, but in miniature form. If you’ve ever been to a miniature world before, then this is very similar.
What is there to see and do?
On average, it takes around 2 hours to walk around the whole of Mini Europe. This is much longer than I had anticipated and there is so much more to see and do than I originally thought. As you walk around, you’ll see a whole host of scale models of European cities such as London, Paris, Tallinn and Berlin… just to name a few. The walk around is done in a really smooth way, with plenty of space between each different place or attraction. You can’t get lost or go the wrong way either really as the paths are laid out in the best way and that makes it easy to go around.
As we walked around, we spent quite a lot of time looking at one tourist attraction then another, trying to figure out what we knew already and what we had visited in person. There’s a lovely range here from the Arc de Triomphe to Big Ben to the Eiffel Tower. Of course, it wouldn’t have been right had the Grand Place of Brussels or the fall of the Berlin Wall not been included too. You’ll see the European flag all over the place as well as great views of Atomium, which is just across the road.
I like to think I know quite a lot of places in the world, and some of the things to see there, but it was nice to see cities I didn’t know much about as well as more popular destinations. This is great for teaching children about the world and geography, and maybe even decide on somewhere new they want to travel to.
Hours of work have gone into creating this miniature park and there are so many small details to look at. Each set-up has added extras such as passengers on a ship, a train that actually goes around or someone on a boat in the river etc. We all thoroughly enjoyed looking at these details, especially as we visited at Halloween. The scenes had Halloween themes to them in October, such as skeletons, dead characters or spooky cobwebs.
At the end of your visit, you can look around ‘Spirit of Europe’, a large indoor space covering the 27 member states of the European Union and the United Kingdom. This is an interactive exhibition where you can play games and take quizzes to test your knowledge of Europe!
Food and drink
We’d only planned on quite a quick visit to Mini Europe, not really knowing what we were going to look around. However, we were there so long that we needed a break for lunch and a drink part way around. There is a large restaurant just over halfway around with plenty of seating both indoors and outdoors. At the time of our visit (October 2022) the restaurant offered a range of food and drinks such as fries, burgers and paninis as well as hot and cold drinks.
The restaurant was a nice place to sit and have a break and refuel, before finishing off our tour of Mini Europe.
Our verdict…
We hadn’t originally planned to visit Mini Europe but we had some time spare after going to the Atomium. What we didn’t expect was to love it quite as much as we did. We spent hours at Mini Europe and ended up needing to eat there as we stayed longer than planned. The value for money is fantastic because, with younger children, you really can spend a lot of time there. It’s definitely made me want to go to more miniature worlds in the future. This is definitely somewhere you should make time for if you’re visiting Brussels.
