My friend and I took the Ghent & Brugge/Bruges day tour from Brussels today (4/5/26 - Easter) and…read moreit was excellent. Our tour guide, Andrea, and our bus driver, Marion (sp) were both fantastic at their jobs. Andrea, in particular, was full of knowledge, energetic, and funny. She is one of the best guides we have come across in our many travels!! We met at 8:45 for a 9 am departure and we were back in Brussels at 7:30pm. Both Ghent & Bruges were charming cities, each in their own way. We walked quite a bit, but at an unhurried pace. We had about an hour of free time in each city, and otherwise we were walking around and seeing various sites, buildings & landmarks. We also took an optional little boat ride in the canals in Bruges which was only 15 euros & quite fun. I do recommend this tour as it was well-worth it. Do make sure that you have Euros in cash fit the bathrooms & for the boat ride in Bruges as it will save you time & hassles Merci!

Ghent and Bruges day tour…read more The coach driver 'Said' and tour guide 'Bruno' were very professional. Said welcomed us as everyone for into the bus. Bruno was very informative, sociable and spoke both in English and French. His instructions are very clear. Tour took all day, but the time to explore was short. So many things to see, only 1 hr between breaks but oh well. Will go back to visit these 2 towns and stay a few days for more exploration.

What better way to discover a city than stroll around without getting tired?…read moreThis is what you get with Once upon a time in Brussels! :) but instead of strolling you're actually more rolling ;) on your electric bike that is! Virginie brought this ingenious idea to Brussels nearly 2 years ago. Visiting a city by bicycle is one of the best ways of seeing the place, but with Brussels being so hilly, it wouldn't be a chilled afternoon out. This is where having electrical bicycles that give you that extra little push of help comes in very handy! :) Going around by bicycle you get to see a lot more than by foot and this way Virginie manages to take us to uncommon places a bit further than the city centre! Although, she knows to surprise you in the city centre too! :) yep, the tours of 'Once' are so well put together that they will enjoy and surprise both 1st timers in Brussels and born and bred Brusselairs! :) So, if you're hesitating how to visit Brussels, what to do, which tour is the best, don't look no further, you will find your joy with 'Once'! :D +Virginie is so nice and enthusiastic about her city, she will never hesitate to give you tips about other things to do during your stay once you finished the tour :) some notes to keep in mind: - If you get cold easily and it is not middle of summer and sunny outside, make sure you dress adequately and bring an extra layer, you never know it might come in handy ;) - if you like to be superactive and are looking for a tough physical activity, this is not it! In the end you don't cycle thaaat much, there are a lot of breaks where Virginie will explain you things about the history of Brussels and the surroundings (this is a guided tour in the end, not a bike ride). but you can of course not use the electrical assistance & then the tour will get physical ;)

Thoroughly enjoyed this biking experience. We were a group of four Americans and the only people on…read morethe tour. All different degrees of cycling experience, but everyone felt comfortable with the electric (we actually chose Once Upon a Time over the competitor because you really do need electric bikes in Brussels -- Amsterdam it is not.). Virginie was really friendly and spoke fluent English. Saw some great locations and appreciated her ability to both playfully criticize her city, but also exhibit so much pride for it. Scheduling our tour was fairly easy as she was okay with us paying cash the day of. Apparently bank transfers are a thing in Belgium, but that would have cost us $45 to do ahead of time, so she just trusted us instead. Ask her to take you to the Jean-Claude Van Damme statue.

This was our 2nd walking tour with Sandemans, and it did not disappoint. Tom, the guide, was…read moreknowledgeable, easy to hear and understand, and very entertaining. We plan to do this again when available in other cities.

A very positive experience today with my free walking tour. Sandemans does a very good job with…read moretheir tour guides and having done this in several cities (Edinburgh, Prague, Amsterdam, Madrid, Barcelona), this is one of the best. My tour guide today was Maggie. Maggie is a Brussels native and very cheery. Clearly excited to show people her city, she was positive and outgoing. The tour lasted 2.5 hours, taking us past the highlights of the old city including the famous Mannekin Pis, the Galleries de la Reine, up the Mont des Arts and more. Only one downer in the tour, Maggie spent a good ten minutes addressing the atrocities of the Belgian Congo, a topic that she is clearly passionate about. And yes, the tour is free with the tour guide paid in tips. The solicitation was modest and not too much. Maggie also invited us to the beer tour that night which she would be running. A good time with Sandemans. I'll continue to use their tours in other European cities.

CitySightseeing Open tours has two bus tours of Brussels. I took a chance and bought a 24 hour…read moreticket for 23 euro. I had walked all over the day before and wanted to see more but did not know public transit. Very nice tour. Free headsets. Duck when tree branches come over. Good audio tour and they stop at key places for pictures. It was well worth the euro and time. My advice is to go early and get off and enjoy the locations they go to. It's a good all day adventure and I'm picky. Wear sunscreen though. Lesson learned the wrong way. It's a bit breezy up top too. Dress for the weather minus a few degrees. Have fun. Tip the driver. He gets you into places I would not take a bicycle.

Taking the City Sightseeing Brussels bus tour was wonderful!…read more I bought a 24 hour pass and took both routes. I liked bus route 1 better (it goes to the atom building) but both routes were worth it. They provide earbud headphones so the audio of the tour is in many different languages. I stopped back at my hotel to grab some headphones I brought with me before the 2nd bus tour & they fit in the headphone jack on the bus fine. (More comfortable than earbuds.) The routes both take 75 minutes each - if you don't hop off at any of the stops. As others have mentioned, you'll be in awe of how the huge double decker bus can navigate tiny streets. I highly recommend this tour when you're visiting Brussels for a great overview of the city.

Fen in Ghent is the best! Our tour guide Fen was incredible. Engaging, charismatic, funny and…read moresuper knowledgable. Everything you want in a tour guide and then some! The tour was super informative - since i used to fall asleep in history class it was great to learn so much about Belgium's history and Ghent specifically. The "free" tour (or pay at the end based on how much you liked it) concept is great. Keeps the tour guides interested and excited. Made our trip :) ASK FOR FEN!

Tom was amazing! He was very fun and knowledgeable. The tour was 2.5 hours and was a great intro to…read moreBrussels. Great recommendations of places to go. We had the Leige waffle later on and it was spectacular! Definitely would recommend this tour.

One of my traditions when going on a trip is to do some sort of food-related activity that revolves…read morearound a country's specialties. For Belgium, everyone knows that its specialties are chocolate and beer. While doing my research I found this company as it came recommended by quite a few bloggers as well as Brussels' tourist bureau site. Length: 4.5 hours Cost: €80/person This is by no means a cheap tour. However, the amount you get for €80 is quite a lot, especially when you factor in that aside from beer and chocolate you also get to know the history behind two of Brussels' most famous landmarks: Grand Place/Grote Markt and Manneken Pis. Personally after the end I couldn't eat another bite of chocolate and I was pretty buzzed, especially if you take into consideration how strong Belgian beers can be. Julie was my guide. She was also training 2 other guides in addition to managing our group. She was the epitome of a good guide - presented the more "boring" parts of the tour in a fun and engaging way, helped guarded the chocolate from being stolen during the Pierre Marcolini portion of the tour (apparently that chocolate's quite popular) and made sure that everyone's needs in the group were taken care of since some people in our group didn't care for beer. Our group also managed to get along very well. Here are my notes of the stops on the tour along with any chocolate and/or beer that was consumed. -Chocopolis- 1. Traditional dark chocolate, coconut base 2. Mexican chocolate with red pepper 3. Speculoos This particular shop is known for their "bean-to-bar" approach; meaning to say that they take control of the entire process as opposed to getting the starting products from distributors. This shop is also good for vegans or people that need dairy-free chocolate as the owner is lactose intolerant. Base milk is from coconut and is used in all the chocolate. I liked the pepper chocolate the most. -Meert- 1. Ginger and yuzu juice 2. Chinese green jasmine tea Located in the Royal Galleries. Apparently they supply chocolate and pastries for the royal family. We were able to choose 2 chocolates from this shop so I went for the more interesting combinations. -Pierre Marcolini- 1. Ecuador single-origin (floral) 2. Earl Grey Tea 3. Câlin "hug" (almond and hazelnut praline, Quimper wafers and Madagascan vanilla caramel) - family favorite. Also located in Royal Galleries. Pierre Marcolini is a master chocolatier and his products are renowned worldwide because he uses high-quality chocolate in his products. Noteworthy is that other people not on the tour tried to get samples thinking that the store was having a tasting. I was aware of Marcolini as the No1DP gifted me chocolate in the past. Later I bought chocolate for gifts (and myself) in another Pierre Marcolini store but bought a few câlins for myself. -Manneken Pis Cafe- Vedett Blond (on tap) This bar is located next to the (in)famous Manneken Pis statue. A good starter beer that's not too strong. -Atelier Sainte Catherine- 1. India single origin (earthy) 2. Cayenne - citronnelle (lemongrass pepper) 3. Sea salt caramel 4. Irish coffee milk ganache An authorized distributor of Frederic Blondeel chocolate, another master chocolatier. His chocolate was recognized as the winner of the Gault & Millau Chocolatier of the Year, the first year the award was inaugurated. I bought chocolate here the next day as gifts. -Dolle Mol- 1. Golden Carolus Tripel 2. Troubadour Magma The first bar also offered a charcuterie board. I liked the provided celery salt as a flavor enhancer to the cheese. Here we were given our first proper introduction to the Belgian dubbel/triple that the region is so well-known for. Troubadour Magma I ended up liking despite being an IPA because nobody overhops their beer in Belgium. -Benelux- 1. Lindeman's Kriek (lambic) 2. Jambe de Bois Here our group was given an introduction to the lambic beers, which Brussels is well-known for. Lambics undergo spontaneous fermentation using wild yeast strains. Kriek (a sour cherry) tasted like Robitussin, which earned mixed reception from the group but I personally liked it. Jambe de Bois is a triple made in Brussels. -Au Bon Vieux Temps- 1. Westmalle Dubbel (on tap) 2. Rochefort 10 The oldest bar in Brussels, this is where I got my proper introduction to trappist beer. I ended up loving trappist beer so much that my family came back here twice to explore their trappist beer offerings. Rochefort 10 is one of my favorite beers and I had a few more glasses of this over the duration of the trip. With the exception of Marcolini the chocolate shops offered a 10% discount if you bought chocolate from them. Not only did I buy chocolate from the vendors listed here, I also bought a few beers sampled on this tour as gifts. This is the best beer tour I've ever done and one of the best tours I've done in Europe. Many thanks to Julie and the Brussels Journey for putting together a great tour.

So glad we did this tour. Not only did we get to sample and learn about chocolate and beer, but we…read morealso learned about the history of Brussels as we walked along. Our guides, Julia and Andrea were amazing - they consistently checked in with all of us and at least one of them was available if there were some slower member of the groups that wanted to stop to buy chocolate or take pictures. They were also extremely informative - you could tell they loved their jobs. We had several pieces of chocolate at each location and also had a 10% discount at 2 of the locations (definitely came in use). We also had 5-6 beers throughout the tour as well. The world cup final ended up being during our tour and they even provided doggy bags of the beer for those who couldn't bear to miss the game. Definitely recommend.

staaff is noisy. attitude must be implemented in that hotel…read more manager must be changed as well. you can literally hear the employees. at the back of the hotels. like little kids. that's not good at all. no discipline.

My experience here was bad. They have a rooftop bar that had been recommended but the service was…read moreawful. I'm sorry I tried it.

Room quality was very poor. TV in the room wouldn't work at all and shower wouldn't drain…read more Stayed in a sweet for the family and we all had to take showers in each other's wastewater. When raised it to the front desk, aside from being apathetic they were actually rude about it

The hotel is good, but the service overall is average. Housekeeping was poor, front desk was fair…read moreto poor. Notably, a/c in our room was terrible. One day, it was cooler outside than in our room. We made 3 calls about this issue, but they were never able to cool it down. They did quickly offer and deliver a portable fan, so I suspect this is a common issue here. If you're like us and prefer a cool room to sleep in (it was always 23 degrees Celsius or more in our room), you should check elsewhere.

Hiring Caroline to be our relocation agent in Brussels was one of the best decisions we made this…read moreyear. She is smart, organized, knowledgeable, professional and just plain likeable. And, bottom line is, she made our move to Brussels a lot less stressful. Our family of four moved here from the US and needed to find a house to live and figure out a lot things about moving to Brussels, like registering with the local Commune (Brussels has 19 Communes, which are like a little cities, each with its own city hall and trash/recycle system etc). After communicating via emails about what sort of house we're looking for, in which neighborhoods (we had a bit of head start on which neighborhoods we want to live since my husband has friends who could advise us), she told us we'll be seeing about 10 houses during our pre-move visit (which we had planned about 2 months ahead of our move). When we check-in to the hotel, we found a "welcome" package waiting for us, which included the information about the places we'll be seeing. And the next morning, she came to the hotel to get us (ontime!) and drove us to all the houses. Honestly, we were a little skeptical when she told us that we will find a house we'll want to rent during that one day of tour but, sure enough, we found a house that we really liked (and that we ended up renting). It's worth noting that she had to make and coordinate appointments with several different real estate agents to show us these homes in one day, a task that would have been very difficult for us to manage from the US, even if we have conversational French (which we don't). Then there's the negotiation of the lease agreement. Caroline was immensely helpful not only as our advocate in the process but also was able to counsel us on what terms are typically open to negotiations and what are not. We even needed Caroline help with making the deposit after the signing the lease agreement because she had to track down the homeowner (who lives out-of-country but was in Brussels for a few days for work) to get his signature to create a special bank account for holding the deposit. Another example of how helpful Caroline was is in connection with registering at our local commune after our family came to Brussels. She went to the commune office early, even before the office opened, so that we could be the first in line by proxy. And the office worker handling the registration spoke very little English so the entire process would have been a complete nightmare if Caroline wasn't there with us. There are so many big and little ways that Caroline helped us since and before we moved here that the fee that we paid her is more than reasonable. In fact, I still email her with questions regarding the various puzzling aspects about Brussels and Belgium in general and she's always kindly answered all my inane questions. I highly recommend Caroline if you need any help with your relocation to Brussels.