Oud Huis de Peellaert Hotel – 90E/night, included buffet breakfast and wifi

There are a lot of small nice-looking hotels in Bruges, but we choose de Peellaert because it was just a few blocks from Markt Square and the best price for our one night stay. Immediately upon entering the hotel you had a sense of comfort and style. The staff was very friendly and helpful with recommendations and directions every time we asked. Our room was small, but had enough room for ourselves and two small bags. The bathroom was roomy with lovely tea tree oil soaps and shampoo.

Probably the nicest thing about the room was the discovery of triple-paned windows- there was a jackhammer going off just down the street, but once the windows were closed, you couldn’t hear it. How nice for a hotel in a busy location!

our view from the third floor

The buffet breakfast was great: standard meats, cheeses and breads (no waffles, Eric lamented) and your coffee was provided in an individual decorative silver pot. Any place that includes smoked salmon on the breakfast buffet is fine with me. Once we checked out, we were able to easily store our luggage while we walked around the city for a few more hours. Highly recommended!

To be honest, we overpaid for this room because of the travel snafu last year and needing to use (or lose) our pre-paid credit. Originally the price would have covered us for two nights, but as it went, the room and terrible buffet breakfast were not worth it. First of all, the hotel entrance is under construction (which we knew about), so we had to enter the hotel from a side entrance and were greeted by employees standing at a tablecloth-covered metal table with computer wires everywhere. Then, to get to your room, you had to go up and down at least three sets of stairs (fun with your luggage!) to a small bank of elevators.

Secondly, take a look at the photo of our view below. Seriously?  So much for a panoramic view of the city.

our ‘panoramic city view’ left a little to be desired

Finding ice was even more of a hassle; in fact, I never found the ice machine. A nice employee found me wandering around and offered to get the ice for me, which, apparently, was on a completely different floor from where the front desk told me. The room itself was acceptable with a comfy bed and nice toiletries in the bathroom but nothing special. One nice bonus due to the construction were the complimentary tickets to the BOZAR museum, although when we got there, three different people claimed to have never seen a voucher like ours before. Thankfully, they accepted them anyway. And, of course, no free internet access at a business hotel.

The biggest disappointment was the buffet breakfast. At 30 Euros a person, it can best be described as a rip-off. The hotel advertises Illy Coffee all over the place but when I asked the morning wait-staff for a latte they just pointed me to the pod espresso machine. Hmmm. The breads were just okay, the fruit was clearly canned, and most of the cold meats looked unappetizing. The wait staff’s behavior was bizarre, they never asked if they could get us anything, yet hovered around the tables all the while. Upon leaving we found two sad looking sparkling wines in a bucket of cold water, untouched.

Unlike other Starwood properties, this hotel never sent out a questionnaire on our experience. We have been to two other Le Meridien properties in Paris and Vienna and both outshone this one many times over. The construction does not excuse the poor management evident at this particular hotel and I can’t see a good reason to go back. Not recommended.

Eric stumbled upon this B&B when we got tired of researching Brussels hotels and decided to explore the small inn options.

After a rather hectic morning, Matthieu politely greeted us at the door and showed us promptly to our well-appointed room on the third floor. Interestingly, the keys were radio controlled so no giant wood blocks in my purse!

The room was beautiful with several windows along one wall affording us lots of natural light. The huge bathroom had double sinks, a large rainwater shower head, deep soaking tub and the same lovely L’occitane shampoos and soaps we had in Bruges. Matthieu was helpful about suggesting places to eat or get a drink and both recommendations he gave us, Royal Brasserie and Mort Subite, were great experiences. The B&B location is very quiet and only a few blocks from lots of restaurants in St. Katherine’s Square.

Breakfast is handled a bit differently here (in a good way) as it’s a made-to-order setup. Our table was stocked with fresh-squeezed orange juice, croissants, jam and hot milk as needed for my coffee; we just had to tell Brandon how we liked our eggs. Yum. All while viewing this beautiful stained glass window. I would highly recommend this place for anyone staying in Brussels.

our very comfy bed in our absolutely gigantic room

Our first morning in Brussels was under a cold drizzle and we had one heck of a time finding a specific museum that was only supposed to be a few blocks from our hotel. The streets here made us remember (not fondly) how difficult it was to get around in Paris two years ago. However, after much map reading, we finally got our bearings and enjoyed a few hours at the Mexican celebration at BOZAR.

Our next stop was the highly anticipated Magritte Museum! We walked in only to be told they didn’t sell tickets on property, so we went on another search to find the main ticket office a block away. We stood in line for several minutes, got cut in on by two well-dressed middle-aged women (who pretended to not understand why I was upset that they blatantly cut in front of us) and then were told by the sales lady that the tickets were timed and we couldn’t enter until 4pm – it was 1pm – and the museum was only open until 5pm. But, she said, our tickets would be half price. We quickly decided that half-priced tickets were fine for an hour and then she rang us up at full price, 16 Euros.

The next bit of conversation went like this:

Me: Wait a second. Didn’t you just say tickets that late were half-price?
Crazy Ticket Lady: No.
Me: (looking at Eric who heard exactly the same thing I did)
CTL: I would not have said that.
Me: (giving her an incredulous look) So, you are going to charge us full price for just an hour.
CTL: Yes.
Eric: We’re outta here.

At least there was a Belgian waffle truck nearby to cheer me up.

At this point, we had pretty much had it with this side of town, so we grabbed our stuff and headed over to St Kathrine’s Square and our bed for the next two nights, Maison Noble.

St Kathrine’s Square – much quieter here

Once we settled in and checked our email, we walked around exploring the northwest section of Brussels down Grand Place and Mannekin Pis (who was not dressed up, boo).

Brussels Town Hall – does it bother anyone else that it’s not symmetrical? It drove Eric crazy.

Grand Place

On day two, we got a 24-hour subway pass and headed back west to see some of the parks, churches and landmarks outside of the old city.

Les Arcades du Cinquantenaire

Although we found Brussels difficult to navigate, Eric managed to memorize a route from our hotel to many of the main landmarks, so it made getting around on our side of town much easier. The beer helped, I’m sure.

So, I think it’s obvious from the photos that we drank quite a lot of beer on this trip and very rarely did we come across something that we didn’t like. Here’s the entire list and where we tried each beer.

L’Estiminet (Bruges)
Leffe bruin

De Garre (Bruges)
De Garre Tripel (house beer),  Gulden Draak

Cambrinus (Bruges)
Duchesse de Bourgogne, Gauloise, Tongerlo Bruin, Petrus Dubbel Bruin

Oud Brugge (Bruges)
Brugse Zot (blonde and bruin – only beer brewed in Bruges)

Smatch Grocery Store (Bruges)
Lindeman’s Framboise, Timmerman’s Peach Lambic

O’Reilly’s Irish Pub (Brussels)
Guinness, Strongbow (what? it counts!)

Delirium Cafe (Brussels)
OMER., Trapistes Rochefort 10, Delirium Tremens (house beer), Floris Kriek Lambic, Buffalo Belgian Stout

Poechenellekelder (Brussels)
Nostradamus, St. Bernardus Abt 12, Forestinne Primoria

Royal Brasserie (Brussels)
Bourgogne de Flanders, Maredsous Bruin

A La Mort Subite (Brussels)
Grimbergen Bruin, Westmalle Dubbel, Ciney Blonde, Mort Subite Framboise (house lambic)

That makes a grand total of 27 different beers!  We paced ourselves well and I’d like to think that all the walking we did counteracted some of the alcohol. :) My second favorite part (drinking beer is the best part, of course) was getting a special glass for each beer.

Cheers!

This was the trip that never happened last fall thanks to a missed Delta flight. So, we added an extra two days during the rebooking process, thinking that we would take a train to Bruges for an overnight, partly because once we mentioned we were going to Brussels, people asked if we were going to Bruges. Every time. So, yes, we are going to Bruges. :)

Rebooking the Brussels hotel turned into a bigger hassle than originally expected and while we managed not to lose any money in the process, it means we are only staying one night at Le Meridian and the rest of the time in a small B&B nearby. This is partially due to overall cost and partially due to the fact that the B&B looked very charming and included breakfast.

I have a ton of places highlighted on my map, mostly having to do with beer and chocolate, so if anyone has any suggestions about not-to-miss restaurants or museums, we’d love to hear it!

You may have noticed the lack of photos and updates from our trip to Brussels last weekend… and that’s because we never made it.

Our flight was delayed over two hours out of Raleigh (due to Atlanta weather) and even though we were repeatedly told that all flights were delayed and our outgoing flight was probably delayed as well, we missed it. By a good 45 minutes. The Brussels flight wasn’t even listed on the monitors by the time we landed (never a good sign).

Once we missed the flight, Delta had automatically rebooked us on a flight for the next day, but that would have cut our time in Brussels to one day and it didn’t seem worth it to us. So we stood in line and waited on hold and booked a flight back to Raleigh with the idea of having the un-used miles redeposited back into our accounts.  We were still stuck in Atlanta for the night, but thankfully we have friends in town, so after a 45 minute MARTA trip we had some thai takeout and a couch to crash on.

After arriving home the next day we got back on the phone to see what, if anything, could be done about our non-refundable hotel reservations. The hotel representative in Belgium said they would make a one-time exception and offered to rebook us for a different date – when did we want to come?

Ummmm.

This prompted another 1+ hour phone call to Delta reservations to see if we could rebook the entire vacation for next March. Unbelievably, the agent was able to reuse our miles and extend our trip two more days for mid-March 2010.

Even though this trip was interrupted, we were ultimately able to salvage our miles and the hotel charges. A huge thanks to Sharisse and Theresa at Delta reservations for helping make a busted trip into a vacation for another time.