Plucky Survivors See Europe Day 65: Le Mans to Brussels

We’re going to call this the “Lost Day.”

No, I didn’t get lost, I just pretty much lost the entire day.

The trip from Le Mans to Brussels should have taken about six hours, but when I looked at the route this morning, I saw it was taking me through Paris.  I thought, “well, that’s a bad idea.”  But the alternate routes would have added an hour or two to the drive, so I sucked it up and hit the road just as it started to rain (which I should’ve taken as an omen).

Heavy rain, terrible traffic, several accidents, and major road construction along the route turned a six-hour drive into a nine-hour odyssey, only without Matt Damon and Anne Hathaway. 

I was so relieved when I finally made it to Brussels, I nearly wept.  But then Brussels happened.  I don’t know what they’re doing, but every single road is ripped up, many are closed with detours, traffic was insane, and pedestrians apparently have death wishes because they just walk right out in front of cars and everyone slams on their brakes.

I got to the Marriott Grand at around 4:30pm and had to park in a taxi zone so I could go in to register only to find out that the room wasn’t ready.  Something about a housekeeping shortage or something, I don’t know.  They said it would take 20 minutes.

Fine, I needed to park the car anyway.  I asked where the parking garage was and the check-in agent told me the entrance was at the back of the building, literally two minutes away.

You can hear the “however” coming, can’t you? 

Because of the road construction, the agent told me, I couldn’t go around the building, I had to take a circuitous route that she said would take about 15 minutes.  She gave me the address of the garage so I could plug it into my phone on Google Maps and I showed it to her.  “Is this right?”  “Yes,” she said.

Well, Google Maps didn’t believe that the parking garage was someplace you could drive to.  It kept trying to route me to about three blocks away, where it wanted me to park and then walk to the parking garage.  After about 45 minutes of driving around, trying to get there, I called the front desk and said, “WTHLF?!!”  (add holy living into it).

“Oh,” she said, “Google Maps doesn’t work.  You have to use Waze.”

The restraint I showed at that moment deserves some sort of award.  I wanted to hurl invectives at her that were almost operatic in their construction.  Then I wanted to drive the car through the front door of the hotel and then toss her the keys and say, “Now it’s your problem.”

Waze got me there and yes; it’s another ridiculously small European parking garage that I’m not sure how I squeezed the car into.

I got back up to the front desk… over an hour after I had left… and the room still wasn’t ready.

I then set fire to the front desk.

Okay, I didn’t, but I really, really wanted to.

They finally got me into the room at around 6pm and it’s very nice except I couldn’t get the terrace doors open.  I called downstairs.  “How do you open the terrace doors?”  I asked.  “Oh, you can’t,” they replied.  “What do you mean, you can’t?” I asked.  “No one is allowed outside for safety reasons,” I was told. 

“So,” I said, gripping the phone so tight I think I cracked it, “I booked a terrace room and paid for a terrace room, but I can’t actually go out onto the terrace?”

I laid down with a wet wash cloth over my face and fell asleep.  It’s currently about one in the morning and I’m eating McDesperate’s as I type this.

So, yeah… the lost day.

Tomorrow, Brussels is going to make it up to me or I’m going to be on the news.