Visiting Brussels with 3 little kids (5, 3 and 1) -- advice?

Can anyone advise:

1) what reasonable fare hotel to stay preferably in city centre?

2) what is happening on Oct 6/7? All the hotel rates seem to go up?

3) Should we live outside the city (cheaper hotel) and travel via train to downtown or should we live in the city?

|||

Hi was going to post something similar myself. Im going with my dd who is 2 from 19th to 26 august.

Any advice on family friendly restaurants, ideas for things to do etc would be great. We are staying in the hotel metropole

|||

The Citadines at Place St Catherine is very central and reasonably priced - an apartment for the price of a hotel room. They do breakfasts but you get a small kitchen area which is very handy with small children.

As for restaurants I can recommend Chez Leon - there%26#39;s one at Brupark and one in the Rue Des Bouchers. Standard Belgian fare, but kids under 12 eat free.

Activities - the Parc de Bruxelles has a fab playground. Brupark with Mini Europe and the Atomium is a whole day out. There is the Oceade pool complex and Kinepolis cinema there too alongs with loads of restaurants and a carousel.

The Museum of Natural History is great and and has an excellent dinosaur selection. Comic Strip Museum, Children%26#39;s museum in Ixelles. The Musical Instrument museum is meant to be good, though we haven%26#39;t done that one yet.

|||

2) Go up compared to what? If you mean, compared to the weekend rate, weekends are cheaper because Brussels is a big destination for international meetings, which will be in full swing from mid-September. Many hotels are full Sunday evening to Thursday evening and drop their prices at weekends and in the summer. Plus this year, there is a series of EU Open Days from 5-8 October (54 seminars on regional policy).

3) There aren%26#39;t many hotels conveniently located outside Brussels from which it would be easy to commute into the city, and in addition I don%26#39;t think travelling with the commuters would be much fun. In my opinion it is better to have somewhere to go back to during the day when the kids are tired.

There are 2 Citadines (aparthotels), the other one is near Louise metro station which is a nicer area for shopping and you might enjoy the Parc d%26#39;Egmont behind the Hilton Hotel, which has a statue of Peter Pan (copy of the one in Kensington Gardens, London). Otherwise, try somewhere like the Madeleine (btw you can select the list of Brussels hotels, on the left of this page, in order of price).