Lovely long weekend in Bruges with friends, not even spoilt by Eurostar’s atrocious customer service when it all went a bit awry with both the French and Belgian strikes hitting the return journey…
Can’t believe we haven’t been to Bruges before. Lucky with the weather, so walking around the old town very much the order of the day, including the 366 (or so) steps up the Belfry. Did all the usual touristy things (boat ride, chips with mayo), found some really lovely (but pricey) restaurants for the evening. All in all, very enjoyable.
Booked the rail plus hotel package through Eurostar. Could you get in touch with them using the emergency number provided? Could you buggery, despite repeated, no doubt very expensive attempts on the mobile. Did they get in touch when they knew the strike would hit our return journey? Did they let us know it was all Belgian trains, not just the Eurostar? Did they arrange for another night’s accommodation? Did they allow us to rebook our trains on the web? One guess only! OK, we could afford to sort ourselves out, although checking out of the hotel and then having to check back in an hour or so later was a tad frustrating. Begs the question what someone who didn’t have access to extra funds would have done, or someone who didn’t have a contact in the UK who could reschedule the tickets.
Now we just have the sorry saga of trying to reclaim our money. Email sent, only a holding reply as yet – something along the lines of “it might take a while to get back to you as we are receiving a high level of ‘feedback’ at the moment”. Can’t think why!