Citadines Sainte Catherine Brussels, Brussels

...booked to stay at the Citadines Aparthotel Sainte Catherine in the centre of Brussels.

~~ The concept ~~

I have stayed in other aparthotels before, but only in beach resorts on Spanish islands, so the Citadines approach was something new for me. The concept is simple: instead of getting an en suite bedroom, you get an apartment with a bedroom, separate living room / kitchen and a bathroom. The advantages are obvious: ...
...people on (our one bedroom apartment would have accommodated 4 people, something most European hotel rooms won't), a kitchen in which to prepare your own meals. Brussels has many apartments such as these available, but rather than stay in an independent flat, we went for an Aparthotel which is, as the name would suggest, a hotel full of apartments. This way, we got a few hotel facilities thrown in, and still managed to have an apartment to call home ... more

This year, ditching the sprouts and instead opting for Brussels alone, we headed to Belgium for Christmas. Since (a) there were 3 of us, and (b) we feared that restaurants and bars would be closed over the festive period, it was decided that an apartment would be preferable to a hotel room, and so in about September we booked to stay at the Citadines Aparthotel Sainte Catherine in the centre of Brussels.

~~ The concept ~~

I have stayed in other aparthotels before, but only in beach resorts on Spanish islands, so the Citadines approach was something new for me. The concept is simple: instead of getting an en suite bedroom, you get an apartment with a bedroom, separate living room / kitchen and a bathroom. The advantages are obvious: more room to move around in, more beds to sleep people on (our one bedroom apartment would have accommodated 4 people, something most European hotel rooms won't), a kitchen in which to prepare your own meals. Brussels has many apartments such as these available, but rather than stay in an independent flat, we went for an Aparthotel which is, as the name would suggest, a hotel full of apartments. This way, we got a few hotel facilities thrown in, and still managed to have an apartment to call home for our stay.

~~ The Location ~~

For trips during Christmas Market season (mainly the month of December) you simply could not ask for a better location than this place, something we didn't fully appreciate until we arrived and found the road shut off and floods of people milling around. The Aparthotel overlooks the main stretch of Christmas market, including the ice rink, big wheel and one of the carousels as well as dozens of stalls (out of season, it's home to a slightly less exciting fish-market). There is an underground stop barely 50m away (St Catherin) and virtually all of the city's attractions are within a 30 minute walk, with many much closer (the Grand Place is about 10 minutes, ditto the Rue Neuve shopping street). There is a supermarket about 25 m away and though it's 'only' a GB Express (= Sainsbury's Local, or Tesco Express) it had everything we wanted including a stunning array of fresh cakes, bread and pastries, a wide selection of cold meats and cheese, vegetables and fruit, store cupboard basics and more-than-basics (different shapes of pasta, various infused olive oils for example), a good selection of chocolates and chocolate spreads (Guylian dipping chocolate or white chocolate praline spread, anyone?) and just about anything else you could think of. Several other review sites have had (mainly American) writers criticise this store as 'small and pokey' but I fail to understand what more they would expect from a city centre location, as this place had much more than your standard 7/11 Convenience store. In any case, there were two much larger supermarkets barely 10 minutes walk away which we came across on our travels. The best thing about this small supermarket? It was open every day including Christmas Day, and had the same fresh rolls and pastries on 25th December as if it were any other day of the year.

~~ The (Apart)hotel bit~~

The facilities of the hotel are limited but evidently chosen for their usefulness. For example, there is an internet terminal in the lobby, free foreign language newspapers are available and there is a good range of local tourist information leaflets on a rack. Though there is no restaurant, there is a breakfast room that you can dine in as and when you feel like it, as most of their rates do not include breakfast. It costs 13 EUR per person which seemed standard for the city, and included a good if not great selection of cheese and meat, cooked items, cereals, fruit, cake and yoghurt. We thought the bread left out by the toaster was all we would get when we went in, but in actual fact the waitress promptly brought us over mini individual baskets of goodies (rolls, white and brown, croissants and pain au chocolat) in the same way someone might bring a toast rack to your table in an English hotel. The breakfast room was small but cosy and included seating for about 25 people, and (different) international newspapers to read.

The reception staff were a mixture of reasonable, dull and sullen, and even my pitiful GCSE French did not inspire them to switch into English, even when we had "une problème avec la clé" and I had to head back down to reception to get it sorted out. That was the only problem we had, but having one electronic key card between 3 of us was slightly annoying at moments, especially as the key was also needed to open the front door at all times (not just out-of-hours as in some establishments). The fact that I nonetheless managed to enter the building on several occasions sans-clé by sneaking in after people lead me to question the true effectiveness of their 'security' measure.

~~ The Apart(hotel) bit~~

We had a one bedroom apartment on the 4th floor, which overlooked the courtyard garden at the back (and was therefore quieter than looking directly onto the Christmas Market street). There was a large, square hall area containing a cupboard with ironing board and a vacuum cleaner - only weekly cleaning was included in the price, though you could request additional maid servicing for a fee. The one bedroom included a double bed and a large wardrobe, and the bathroom had a short bath with a powerful shower, and fluffy white towels and toiletries. Strangely the toilet was separate from the bathroom, and was housed in what seemed like a cramped cupboard to the other side of the entrance hall. It was so cramped, in fact, that it was hard to get into and out of, assuming, that is, that you wanted to shut the door. On that subject, the walls of the toilet and bathroom were also extremely thin, and reminded me that if I'd wanted to be that familiar with other people's toilet regimes then I would already be a Gillian McKeith style nutritionist. Note to hotel builders: please think about sound proofing.

The remaining room was the lounge-kitchen-diner and included two sofa beds, a table and two chairs (a bit odd for an apartment that sleeps 4… I ended up perching on one of the nesting tables for the duration of our stay). There was also a TV and a tape/CD/radio hifi. The TV channels were peculiar - we had lots of Flemish and French, a few German things and BBC One, but none of the usual suspects (no CNN, NBC, Eurosport or similar). The kitchen was to one side of the room and housed a hob, fridge, toaster, kettle, microwave, sink and dishwasher. Yes, a dishwasher. Right where I would have preferred an oven, they included a contraption for washing the dishes of the aforementioned Americans, too lazy to do it themselves. The dishwasher was tiny, noisy and needed running often (washing up by hand was hard due to a lack of draining rack) so was more trouble than it was worth. The cutlery and crockery provided included enough, just , for 4 guests, assuming you didn't really want serving dishes or more than one course anyway. The fairly bare cupboards had the air of a student kitchen about them - we had a small milk pan, a frying pan and a medium sized saucepan-lid, for example, but no medium sized saucepan to cook things in. Still, through the ingenuity possessed only by an astrophysicist, an NHS bureaucrat and a financial advisor, who between them have lived with and cooked in bizarrely-kitted-out kitchens in at least 10 countries, we survived, and were soon dining on such meals as frying-pan cooked pasta and my personal favourite, chocolate dipped in chocolate. For people who can't be bothered to cook, there are lots of restaurants nearby and the complex also provides useful delivery guides in each apartment, listing the restaurants which deliver and their individual menus and prices. This was virtually the only in-room information provided, though there was a full instruction manual detailing how to use all the kitchen equipment for those who can't figure it out.

The kitchenette came complete with a sponge and tea towel, and one tab for the dishwasher (we didn't buy more…but did discover that running the thing with no cleaning stuff in worked fine. Hurray for good old fashioned hot water.) Things we took with us that were useful included paper serviettes (which double as kitchen roll if needed) and a few store-cupboard essentials (mini travelling salt and pepper and a tiny bottle of olive oil). Some things I would have liked, and might have bought had we been staying longer, include a grater and maybe a proper sized pan (the large supermarkets had them for under 10 EUR each).

The lighting throughout was good, perhaps even too good in places. In the bedroom each side of the bed had individually controlled reading lights, but these were so bright that little was gained from having them, with the overall brightness from one of those being the same as if you had just put the main overhead light on. Both the living room and the bedroom had windows which opened rather dangerously onto a low bar which you could easily have jumped, had you felt the urge. Because it was cold, any brief airing of the room was automatically followed by a blast of the heaters, which were located in every room apart from the toilet cupboard, and were easy to switch on and off, though they also seemed to be on a central timer that wouldn't allow you to switch them on every so often. Luckily the bedding provided was warm, and there were spare blankets in the cupboards in both rooms. The décor throughout was tasteful and plain, though our apartment seemed confusingly to have been designed by a Brit or at least a lover of all things British - all the paintings on the walls were of London monuments and locations.

~~ The Important Stuff ~~

We paid about £85 per night to stay here, booking through hotels.com, and given that there were 3 of us, and that we were staying over the Christmas period, this seemed frightfully reasonable despite the few peculiarities like the scarcely equipped kitchen and the 2-dining-chairs-for-4-people set up. We could easily have paid the same for a single hotel room, without the extra space and useful kitchen the apartment afforded us, and the location was simply superb for our particular trip. It was a successful stay and I would definitely investigate staying in such a complex again in future cities I visit, as even with only 2 people it would be good value for money, not even taking into account the wonderful convenience of having your own kitchen. Similarly, what you lose from not having a daily maid service (I have to make my own bed? I don't even do that at home…) is soon forgotten thanks to what you gain from knowing your apartment is yours for the duration of your stay, with no fears about returning after breakfast or during the day to find an army of cleaners crawling about inside.

http://www.citadines.com/en/belgium/brussels/sainte_catherine.html

Definitely recommended.
 

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