Mansion9 Bruges

The daily breakfast was delicious, and the cozy rooms capture the atmosphere of Brugge. The mansion is well placed too: in just a few minutes on foot, you can reach the belfry and wander through some of the city’s streets.

It’s a nice-looking property and seems to have been renovated fairly recently, which is a big plus. The location is around a 20-minute walk from the city centre. That’s manageable, but Brugge is very small and there are lots of B&Bs and hotels closer in. The main problem was that things didn’t seem well organized. They couldn’t get the credit card machine working for the two days from check-in to check-out, even though the same cards worked everywhere else in Brugge. Elsy kindly called us a taxi and said it would take five minutes, but it actually took 25, and we missed our train to Antwerp.

There’s parking out front, but it’s limited to a four-hour stay. Another free, long-term parking spot is a 15-minute walk away. The town centre is a little further out, though still walkable, about 15-20 minutes. This is a perfect little luxury B&B. The room looked exactly like the picture, and was stylish, new and impeccably clean.

The automatic bathroom and toilet lights kept switching off far too quickly, so I was left in the dark most of the time. There was also a confusing issue at checkout: the room information said still water from the honesty bar was free, but when we said we’d taken some because there wasn’t any in the room, the woman tried to charge us. She replied, “Maybe in France it’s free, but not here,” which made no sense. Speaking French doesn’t mean we’re from France, and the information should match what’s written on the paper. Check-in itself went well, though the person helping us didn’t seem very comfortable speaking English.