Makes Brussels Feel Like a 3rd World Country
Positiv: --> TLDR? This hotel was a nightmare because of:
- No working water for 2 days without notice!
- Rude and unprofessional staff (arguing in the hall for 40 minutes)
- The worst water pressure
- Ladies - Bathroom was completely unusable to do hair/makeup (lighting, no plugs, no mirrors outside the bathroom)
Oh and that "open bar" they call out? You have to pay for anything you get from it. They like to be purposefully deceiving here.
Negativ: After a 8 hours of travel, sweaty and tired, we arrived at NH Brussels Grand Place. At the counter was a notice saying that there would be no water service (no showers, no use of toilets, no use of sinks) until the evening. News to us. I asked why we were not notified that there was maintenance on the water - if we had been emailed, I would have showered before leaving in the morning. It was a huge inconvenience that now I had to either sit in the room for hours waiting for the water to come on, wasting our precious little time in Brussels, or hit the town with hair that hadn't been washed in 2 days, and generally just feeling disgusting. Without apologizing, she said they found out about it this morning and there was nothing she could do.
We came down later and asked for a manager. He wasn't in. We were upset that we had no warning about the water and were treated without empathy by the concierge. We were told by another unapologetic employee at the front desk that this is planned maintenance that happens at the start of the year to clean the water. So...you didn't know it was happening to give advanced notice but it's planned maintenance that happens this time every year? Alright then.
The next morning we're awoken at 8am by a woman loudly cleaning out all the rooms in the hall. Bit early? Fine. Then we hear more commotion - the woman, along with what sounds like the manager, are loudly arguing in the hall. We can hear it all the way from the bed, as it's a heated argument. This lasts 30-40 minutes.
I get up and see that there's a slip of paper under my door. I pick it up and realize it's identical to the notice we saw yesterday, just with changed dates. Yes - the water will be off again from 10:30am to 5:30pm. It is now just after 9am - thankfully we didn't sleep in and miss our ability to shower again!! Yet again, we get no notice that we need to get up at 9am or earlier to get a shower again. Good thing we had a full day planned and weren't reliant on using the toilet in the hotel during the day.
I take a shower (while I still can), and it's seriously a joke. The water dribbles from the shower head, barely allowing me to fully rinse the shampoo from my hair. I towel off and pick up the hotel-provided hair dryer. It's weak, but it will do. One minute later, the dryer overheats and is rendered unusable. Luckily, I have a travel dryer. I see there are no outlets in nor around the bathroom. Typical Europe. I go out into the bed area and realize the *only* mirrors are in the bathroom. I'm forced to use my faint reflection in the tv as a mirror.
That done, I go back into the bathroom to do my makeup. I look at myself in the mirror and see that the lighting is so poorly laid out, it makes it nearly impossible to see what you're doing. There are no front facing lights, just an led that is behind you as you get up close to the mirror to apply makeup, making you look like the monster in a horror film. Clearly a woman had no hand in its design.
