Roaming Numeral

For our visit to Brussels, we were arriving by train and booked a stay at Hotel Indigo Brussel for its proximity to Brussels Nord. The short five-minute walk from the train station juggling our luggage was a godsend after a long day of travel.

The four-star boutique hotel is bursting with greenery and brass tones, and the tropical theme carries throughout the hotel. Ambient jungle noises are played in the hallways- but don’t worry, you can’t hear it from the rooms.

The main floor of the hotel has several common areas, including a few areas for their in-house restaurant “Urban Picnic” that mostly served as work stations for us. We declined to add breakfast to our stay, but did take advantage of some of the quicker sandwiches and snacks when we were in a pinch. Plus, it was a comfortable spot for us to watch some of the World Cup matches without wandering too far from home.

There is also an elegant “Garden Kitchen” that we didn’t investigate, but looked beautiful when we peeked over at it.

We quickly befriended several of the hotel staff who were very friendly towards us and always had a recommendation for food or site seeing when asked.

We booked a standard room with two twin beds. As usual in Europe, that translated to two twin beds pushed together. We did slide apart a bit during the night, but the two sets of blankets ensured that we weren’t fighting over the blankets while we were sleeping.

The beds themselves were very comfortable, though my mattress topper kept slipping. Still, it was an easy enough fix and housekeeping would fix it every time they made the beds as well.

The room was relatively small, but suited us well enough. There was room for a chair, a bird cage styled lamp, a narrow desk and a small clothing rack- helpful since we had to cut our laundry time short in Switzerland and some of our thing were still a little wet.

Our bathroom was fairly large with a glass-walled stand up shower, though looking at reviews from other guests, I suspect the bathroom may have been unusually spacious.

Despite looking like our suitcases had exploded all over the room with our air-drying laundry, we were very pleased with the stylish accommodation.

I also really enjoyed relaxing in the hotel’s sauna. I’ve never been a sauna-person before, but after long days spent walking around the city,the cold winter air really seeped into my bones. My companion and I would spend time each evening sprawled out like cats on the empty sauna benches until we could feel our toes again.

My one gripe with this hotel was that I feel that the elevators were quite slow- we once waited for an elevator for over five minutes before giving up and taking the stairs.

The hotel itself is only about a ten-minutes walk from most of the city’s main attractions, and is only a few steps from the nearest metro station for those adventuring further out. The distinct, almost spaceship-like Starbucks (or, as we dubbed it, Starship Starbies), was also a super handy landmark when it came to heading back to the hotel.

Overall, I found the service to be excellent and personable, and the hotel itself to be clean, comfortable and hip to boot!