10th November 2023, Friday
I had planned a weekend gateway to Belgium as it will be a public holiday next Monday for Singapore and it was quite near to Netherlands (about 2hrs plus train ride). Since I had a half day off today, so I worked from 1 am to 4:30 am (NL time) and we also had to leave the house by 5 am to catch our train. However, we only managed to leave the house by 5:05 am and then we had to walk 20 mins to the train station. The wind was blowing sooo strong and it felt so cold and dry. We were 15 mins earlier than our scheduled time but there was a 10 mins delay on our train. So we hid in the seated room to wait for our train. We managed get to leave almost to 6 am and off we go to Brussels.
There was a couple of hicups during the train journey. When we were about to reach Breda Station, the train suddenly stopped for a few minutes due to a stop in electricity providing to the train and they had to reboot the system to get the electricity back. In the end, there was a delay on the train schedule and the train conductor announced they will have to do quick stop at the upcoming stations in order to catch up the delayed time. When we reached Brussels Midi station, the conductor was walking around the train checking if anyone was going to Brussels Central station. If yes, will need to get off and transfer to another train in platform 8 to go Brussels Central station instead. Since we need to go to Brussels Central, we had to change to the other train in platform 8 instead. We managed to reach Brussels Central almost 10 am (1 hour later than our expected arrival time). When we reached there, it was also raining and my friend needed soooo badly a place for her stupid meeting. There was no place for her and she wanted to get to the hotel as fast as she could. So we kind of had a fight because of it, but we still went ahead straight to the hotel under the rain. It was a 15-20 mins walk to the hotel and i was so glad we reached there finally. Though we can't check in yet, there was free wifi and seating place to use.
So my friend stayed on for her work and i headed out to explore the town first on my own. I saw a very tall building that looked like a cathedral, so i headed walking towards it. It was situated at the centre square where there were 7 majestic looking buildings around the grand square. However, there was stuffs blocking the view as the people was preparing to setup for stalls and decorations for their Christmas markets. And there were different groups of walking tours with different languages telling stories about the buildings. There were also a lot of chocolate and waffles shops around each corner. There were also paintings of Tintin characters around the building since this was the birth place of Tintin comics. It also started to rain slightly and i just continued walking around the streets till 11: 45 am. My friend called me when i was buying some almond chocolate in a shop named La Belgique Gourmande. So i quickly paid and headed back to the hotel to meet her for lunch. We decided to go try this eating place named Baogo which was near the central. It was just opened for business so it was easy to get a table for dine -in during lunch time. It was a asian fusion restaurant but it doesn't look like it though they did sell sim dum. But reviews show they were famous for their "bao". It was actually hamburger but the buns looked like chinese bao instead. We ordered a Panko Chieken Bao (Popular choice) and a Panko Salmon Bao to try with sweet potato fries. The baos came in a large dim sum basket and the portion was big. The fried chicken breast in the bao was cooked nicely and was yummy with the sauce. The salmon burger was also nice with avocado but it was not as good as the chicken burger. Overall, the food was nice here.
After lunch, we walked around for a while and we went to a cookie shop named Maison Dandoy. My friend was recommending the cookies and sweets in the shop. And we also bought a small box of 30 cookies and we got to pick the cookies. After that, we headed back to the hotel as it was almost 2 pm and my friend needed to go back to her work. Once we reached the hotel, she went back to her work and i took a rest on the sofa while waiting for check-in. At 2 plus, we tried to ask for check-in as we saw other visitors seems to get check-in before 3 pm. When it was our turn, the staff tried to check us in and got us to pay the hotel taxes. After paying, the staff told us that our room was not ready and we had to check-in after 3 pm...It was so 'funny' that he even took my friend's passport for verification and got us to pay the hotel tax first, then told us our room was not ready. So never mind, we went back to the seating area and wait for some more time. i ended up napping on the sofa while waiting. When i woke up, it already passed 3pm. So i decided to go back to the same staff to check if our room is ready. The staff said it was ready and wanted my friend's passport for registration. I was thinking 'what the hell, didn't you take the details when we first checked in?' But never mind again, i went to my friend to get her passport for the guy to key the details. And finally he passed us our room key after multiple to and fro. I was just glad to go into our room so i can sleep.
So we took our bags and went up to the room. When we walked into the room, the room felt cold and we tried to set the air-con cum heater. But the lowest temperature we can set was only 15 degrees and there seem to have cold air blowing out. In the end we gave up and continued with our stuffs. There was not even a kettle in the room and the room looked old too. I just napped again until my friend knocked off from her work. But it was already raining heavily and we still had to grab something for dinner. Before we left the hotel, we asked the reception to get their technician to check on our heater. Then we went out to get some water first from the mini store beside the hotel. We tried to head to a ramen shop we searched online by walking but we ended up stopping a chinese noodles eating place - Au bon bol along the way. The smell of the soup was attractive to me and we just went in instead as there were other customers going in and it was already pouring. My friend checked the reviews online briefly and there was some good reviews. We went upstairs to find a seat and we decided to order a bowl of soup noodles with mixed meat (included pork, chicken, duck and beef) and a mixed dim sum for sharing. After we ordered, the people started coming in and filling up the place. Soon it was full house but we slowly noticed the time taken for the food to serve was taking sooo long. We waited like 30 mins or so for our noodles to be served. The noodles and soup was nice but the fried chicken pieces were already soaked long in the soup and it was hard. Taste still not too bad though. The dim sum was not tasty at all, tasted like frozen dim sum instead,
By the time we finished dinner, it was already past 7, going to be 8 pm. So we paid for the meal and headed back to our hotel. A lot of people were still outside shopping around the stores and walking the streets. When we reached the hotel, we checked with the reception and was informed their technician had went up and looked at our heater. So we went up to our room and sure enough, the room was slightly warmer than earlier. We saw the ac control was on but the temperature was set to nothing. But it was still slightly cold, luckily the blanket was thick enough to keep us warm while we slept. And the wifi kept dropping since our room was the very very far back on the level.
Hotel stayed: Bedford Hotel & Congress Centre
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