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No France At All
Luxembourg has much more topography than I thought it would.
Our hotel, the DoubleTree, looked like a Soviet tower block. Trip Advisor had remarked on this but said that the newly refurbished rooms were lovely. Ours wasn't either lovely or newly-refurbished, and had what I very much hope will turn out to be the worst mattress of the trip.
Business hotel, so bloody SwissCom. Not refurbished, so not enough power sockets to set up the airport, so offline overnight.
We had dinner in the hotel, it being late and out of town. It wasn't nearly as good as the descriptions on the menu, but it was ok and the local wine was good. There was a smoking bar! Indoors, and everything! While I was in there, after dinner, two twenty-something Chinese guys came in, ordered cognac, looked around at the few, quiet people in the bar and wistfully asked the bar man if it would get busy later. When told that this was busy for a non-week night, they drank and left.
(This agrees with the size and emptiness of the restaurant, which does make you wonder. I mean, if your hotel is, say, half refurbished, and your expected occupancy for the night is, say, less than fifty percent, doesn't it make commercial sense to put your guests in rooms that are less likely to make them resolve to never visit again?)
Sunday morning in Luxembourg was decidedly grey and wet. We read the Wikipedia page about the city and decided that it wasn't exciting enough for the weather, so off we headed to Belgium instead. Belgium was also grey and wet, surprisingly.
We stopped in Ghent, had a wander in the intermittent drizzle and some lunch, and then headed on to Bruges. At which point the (rather elderly anyway, and frankly struggling with having has a map of northern europe stuffed into her brain) Sat Nav died. This meant I had to map read, which is something to generally be avoided, but we got to the hotel eventually: the Hotel Ter Duinen, which seems nice and has parking, which is a bonus around here. Still rather grey, but I dare say we'll go for a wander in town after Mike's finished reinstalling the Sat Nav ("I seem to have set it to Finnish...") in the hopes that that will fix it.
Our hotel, the DoubleTree, looked like a Soviet tower block. Trip Advisor had remarked on this but said that the newly refurbished rooms were lovely. Ours wasn't either lovely or newly-refurbished, and had what I very much hope will turn out to be the worst mattress of the trip.
Business hotel, so bloody SwissCom. Not refurbished, so not enough power sockets to set up the airport, so offline overnight.
We had dinner in the hotel, it being late and out of town. It wasn't nearly as good as the descriptions on the menu, but it was ok and the local wine was good. There was a smoking bar! Indoors, and everything! While I was in there, after dinner, two twenty-something Chinese guys came in, ordered cognac, looked around at the few, quiet people in the bar and wistfully asked the bar man if it would get busy later. When told that this was busy for a non-week night, they drank and left.
(This agrees with the size and emptiness of the restaurant, which does make you wonder. I mean, if your hotel is, say, half refurbished, and your expected occupancy for the night is, say, less than fifty percent, doesn't it make commercial sense to put your guests in rooms that are less likely to make them resolve to never visit again?)
Sunday morning in Luxembourg was decidedly grey and wet. We read the Wikipedia page about the city and decided that it wasn't exciting enough for the weather, so off we headed to Belgium instead. Belgium was also grey and wet, surprisingly.
We stopped in Ghent, had a wander in the intermittent drizzle and some lunch, and then headed on to Bruges. At which point the (rather elderly anyway, and frankly struggling with having has a map of northern europe stuffed into her brain) Sat Nav died. This meant I had to map read, which is something to generally be avoided, but we got to the hotel eventually: the Hotel Ter Duinen, which seems nice and has parking, which is a bonus around here. Still rather grey, but I dare say we'll go for a wander in town after Mike's finished reinstalling the Sat Nav ("I seem to have set it to Finnish...") in the hopes that that will fix it.
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SOrry you ended up with a bad hotel, though: there are several fine ones and some excellent restaurants.
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