noplasticshowers

Beauty is only skin deep, and sometimes it is even less deep than that. Deceptively pretty and wired looking from afar, the Made in Louise hotel has aspirations beyond its class. The setting is quaint and pretty, and the gardens have lots of birds and trees, but ultimately too many corners have been cut in the Ikea-inspired design for this hotel to reach boutique class.

It seems to be designed for pensioners on vacation who would like to stay in “one of those hip new places” but who are not really sure what that means. The construction of room 31 provides a good example. The style is not bad, but its implementation is cheap. And in some cases the facade gives way entirely and the Ptompkin reality settles in.

The garden is very pretty

Room 31 has nice windows

But whoever attached this TV crooked to the wall just blew it

Seems stylish in a Marriott kind of way

But the fabrics are artificial and the furniture is hollow and plastic

Of course we’re looking into the shower situation every time we try a new property.

Not a bad shower, but the shower pan is noisy

This is just not good

Plastic cup? really?

The main problem with the cheap construction is the noise in the morning when the building wakes up. You can hear every shower’s water hit the floor and each toilet flush. And those great birds from the afternoon become a serious nuisance around 5:30am. Also the window shades may look cool, but they fail to block the light. Sleep? Who needs it?!

Breakfast? Forgettable. Utterly. We can’t even remember what we had and our plate is still sitting beside us.

So all told, three very low showerheads for this place. It’s not bad, but it is really no better than a Marriott in many ways.

We will not be back.

In town for an event, we were pleased to visit Madou’s Provence whose food continues to live up to its reputation. Here is a little gem that punches way above its weight class.

Sadly the only craft cocktail bar in town (Hortense) is closed Monday through Wednesday. So we slummed it at Floris bar which has an insane collection of absinthe (hundreds of bottles) but is also a super seedy dive often hit with a wash of humanity seeking beer and thumping music. Our server Alice was great, but no.

We did find this fantastic product

1/3 of the wall of absinthe at Floris

Anyway, there is better to be discovered in Brussels, and we definitely need to visit again.