Hotel des Galeries

We went to Brussels to take our young son to the Pixar exhibition and so we stayed only three nights at this hotel. The location really couldn't be better. Right off the Royal Gallery of St Hubert and a very short walk to the Grand Place square, both of which are stunning - I had no idea Brussels was this beautiful. The hotel is surrounded by chocolatiers, restaurants, places to eat waffles and have hot chocolate etc. It is also a short walk to the main shopping district. The hotel is small, and I would describe it as boutique. And we experienced it as very clean and well looked after and, although I expected some night time noise due to the hotel's centrality, it was very quiet and we weren't disturbed at all. We travel a lot, and we experienced this hotel as lovely and the staff even lovelier. We had a room that was on two levels, the upper with a double bed and the lower with a single bed, but the lower room was set up a bit more like a living area, with a desk and seating, which was perfect for us, as we used this room as a living area during the day and in the evening. The breakfast is limited, but very nice and perfectly adequate - my wife actually described the breakfast as "lovely". On one of the evenings of our stay our son didn't sleep well (nothing to do with the hotel - just one of those nights) and so I went down to breakfast to get breakfast items for the three of us to take back to the room to eat when he had awoken. The lady in the breakfast room was so, so helpful when I explained what I was doing - she got a larger tray for me and came back to the lift with me - however the lift had just broken (it was working again later that day - that's just the way with machinery - one of those things) and so I said I'd carry the breakfast tray up to our room, which was a few floors up - however, she would not let me carry it up myself and insisted on carrying it up for me - she was just so lovely and helpful. The reception staff were also really nice and helpful, polite but not intrusive. And they ordered a taxi for us to get back to the train station, informing us that if they ordered it then the taxi would come straight to the door (which it did) but if we ordered we'd have to walk up to the Main Street - they do offer a pick up service from train station etc, which we didn't take as we just got a normal taxi that was outside the train station - but I'd recommend taking the hotel's offer as the taxi driver from the train station dropped us about a 5-10 walk from the hotel as he couldn't work out how to get there. All in all it was a lovely few days in this hotel. Whilst I can see that others had a different experience, I'd happily recommend this hotel to family and friends. It was a perfect stay for us.