After the XP Day Benelux 2006 was nearing its end, we realized with Markus that we need accommodation for the night so online we went (I recommend lastminute.com, by the way. It has saved my day--or night--a couple of times).
We decided to stay at Le Plaza. It's a very nice 5-star hotel right in the middle of the shopping streets in Brussels and close to the King's residence and the Parliament House. Perfect for our day-as-a-tourist plan since we're not that much into museums, especially when we only have a few hours to spare during day time. If you're going to Brussels, do look into staying at Le Plaza (although I did have some complaints, too. I'll blog about it separately. Maybe).
Oh, the fact that the hotel was hosting an audition for the Belgian Idols 2007 had nothing to do with our decision to stay there. Really. We only found out about it on Saturday, wondering why there is a horde of teenagers standing in front of our hotel...
After the conference, a small group of us went to a nice restaurant in Mechelen called Passade for some crocodile and kangaroo before heading to Brussels. It was also very nice of Pascal to drive me and Markus to our hotel after the dinner. Thanks again!
Anyway, after getting some taste of Brussels' nightlife and especially the local beverages, we headed back to the hotel for a well-deserved long sleep. Obviously we forgot to mention at the check-in that we'd like a late checkout so the staff (which was very friendly by the way) woke me up a couple of hours before we had intended to get the move on. I suppose that was only a good thing because we didn't have too much time in Brussels anyway.
We ended up descoping all of the artsy museum stuff from our tourist backlog. As much as the thought of a French comics museum excited our inner geek, we opted for something easier:
- Eat well
- Check out King's crib
- Buy local waffel
- Buy le crayon de lumiére
- Buy toy for 2-year old
- Buy something else
Yes. We are slaves of the increasingly commercial world.
After completing our short sightseeing tour and a rather insignificant shopping spree, we headed back to the hotel to pick up our gear. We had reserved plenty of time to get to the airport, not knowing how bad the Brussels saturday traffic would be and how long queues the Brussels airport would have on weekends.
It turns out the traffic in the city centre is horrible also on saturdays. The taxi ride took somewhere around 50 minutes, out of which 5 minutes was highway and the rest was trying to get out of the city. It would've taken longer if our taxi driver would not have taken some shortcuts, such as driving a lane to the wrong direction...
Much to our pleasure, the airport was dead silent, though, which made for a nice no-queueing experience which (for me at leat) is hardly a common thing at airports. Speaking of the airport, you can't not love seeing this sticker everywhere:
