Nancy Apartments

Buyer beware, and then some. Orbitz really stuck us with a lemon on this one.
Like, this place is listed as a hotel online, and though it’s name says ‘apartments’ we didn’t think anything of it as we’d stayed at a few other places on our stay that were called the same, but were, in fact, hotels.
This is NOT a hotel. It’s a well-​furnished but semi functioning apartment in a shady as hell, shanty-​town part are of Brussels. We should have known better when 2 cabs refused to take us and a third dumped us off only a block after we’d gotten in his cab.
While looking for the Nancy Apartments, which have no sign and are on a graffiti, garbage, and feces-​ridden street with no street lights, we paced back and forth trying to find where we were supposed to go. We saw numerous shady dealings in the 10 minutes we stood outside, including several cars pulling up at the corner, letting one person out, driving off, then the person would stand there until another car drove up and did the same, letting one person out, driving off, and then the first person would hand something to the second person that got out, then the first would take off, while the new guy stood and waited for another car to drop off a single person in the dark and make an exchange on a Tuesday night.
We were still having trouble deciphering if we were even at the correct building when two ladies popped out of what we thought was the correct address with a broken mini tv in hand and a stumble in their walk. We told them that we had booked something at that address for our hotel and asked if they were also staying there or cold help us. They replied that the building was changing over to an inn, but not yet, and that it wasn’t ready yet and then walked away whispering.
We waited longer outside and buzzed the buzzer for every apartment in the building hoping to get a hold of Christina, which was the name of the manager that Orbitz provided us with. No one answered.
Then we saw a couple who did not look like criminals walking down the street who were kind enough to let us use their phone to call the number Orbitz had provided as the number for the hotel, only the number was out of service. WTF is up with that? Did we just get duped by Orbitz?
We didn’t know what to do and we all felt like we were 2-​minutes from being robbed of all our sh*t, so we went back to our plan-​A of buzzing every apartment until someone answered and helped us. Finally, Christina, who was actually as sweet as can be, came out and let us in.
She told us we were on the third floor, which I think may have been an ill-​attempt at a euphemism because our room was actually on the 6^th floor… atop 8 flights of stairs. No elevator and a single, tight, steep staircase, with all our luggage.
The inside of the room was very nice, albeit TINY and didn’t have room for 4 people as was described online. Instead of having enough bed space for 4, it only had enough for 3, and the 4^th bed was a 3-​ft decorative white leather couch. So two people slept on a cot together, with a single sheet as a blanket. You couldn’t have more than two people standing in any room without feeling crushed, and there was one 8 ½×11in mirror in the bathroom, but that was it for all of us to get ready with.
There was a heating/​cooling unit in the kitchen above the counter that leaked blue ooze onto the counter and dishrack, but they did give us a giant squeegee to clean up the stuff that was leaking with. There was wifi, albeit spotty enough that you’d only be able to access the interwebs 20% of the time you tried. There were no smoke detectors, carbon monoxide anything, and none of the general safety features that you’d hope would be in a high-​rise building.
There was a sign on the door about keeping everything locked because of intruders, yet we discovered on our first morning that a man was going to be drilling holes in the walls of the hallway and that the building doors would be open all day, so to beware when we were coming and going of suspicious people in the building.
Across the street is some scary public housing high-​rise and on our second day there was a news crew outside at night trying to get in, but we felt a tad safer because at least with the news crew there, there might be a better chance of our survival.
I also thought it was weird that we had to pay an additional 40 euro in cash to the inn keeper at the end of our stay as a convenience charge… which is weird right?
If Christina weren’t so nice, if the décor inside the actual apartment really cute, and if Orbitz hadn’t agreed to refund the cost of our entire stay there due to rather extreme and the previously undisclosed conditions of the building, this review would likely be a single star.
Maybe Nancy Apartments can get their act together for future patrons, but the state of their affairs during our stay was sad and well-​documented in the pics we took of the conditions. On repeat: Buyer beware