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Good Rate :: Belgium's Choco-Laté Festival

March 27, 2007 at 11:31 AM | 0 Comments

[Ed. Note: Welcome to our Good Rate/Bad Rate feature where we look at hotel prices in the same city and decide which one most deserves your hard-earned benjamins. Rates quotes here were valid for April 7 to 9, 2007 and are subject to change. Enjoy.]

We couldn't resist anything that lets us say "choco-laté" over and over, so this week we're checking out rates in Bruges (or Brugge), Belgium for the Choco-Laté Festival running April 6 to 10. Do your dieting before you head in this direction, then dive in for a few days of indulgence, sleeping it off at the Ibis Brugge Centrum.

The hotel pickings are slim already for the weekend nights of April 7 and 8, with only a few hotels showing availability on both nights. The best bet for strolling, at a rate that won't take a year of cocoa bean picking wages to pay off, is the Ibis Brugge Centrum--at $178 per night. This is a mid-range 3-star hotel that's part of the Accor group, but in a historic building at least. It has a 24-hour snack bar, a reasonably priced restaurant, and rooms that are on the small side but well-kept. You'll probably want to skip that $15 breakfast though and grab something light nearby. (Plus while most 3-star hotels in the U.S. throw in free wi-fi now, here you'll pay a minimum of 10 euros to log on.)

Here's the description of the mouth-watering festival itself from What's On When:

The self-proclaimed Belgian chocolate capital goes a step further with chocolate sculpture contests, body painting, children's activities and a trail taking in the city's landmark chocolatiers such as Leonidas, Godiva and Neuhaus.

Brushing aside chocolate's sinful connotations, the festival reveals the health benefits of cocoa in massage, beauty therapy and skin products - so there's no reason to feel guilty about a little sweet indulgence.

The Ibis Brugge Centrum is a mile from the city center, so you can walk off the choco-laté afterwards too.

[Photo: David Wilmot]

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