Planning My Trip to Brussels

Even though I’m in California right now, I can’t forget that I’m going to be on my way to Brussels, Belgium in just a few weeks.  Brad is going for business and offered to bring me along.  Of course, I jumped at the chance!

We decided to go a few days early before he had to be there for work so we could do the tourist thing together.  I feel so incredibly lucky.  Just a few years ago, I had never even been to Europe and now this will be the third time I’ve been in a little over two years.  (I know, I know, Brad.  Don’t get used to this…haha.)

I recently tried out a social media travel site called Gogobot.

Gogobot’s big win is that it allows you to connect with your friends to get their advice on where to visit, what to eat, and where to stay when you travel.

Not only can you connect with friends, you can connect with complete strangers who are willing to offer advice about the place(s) you are visiting — people who have already been to your travel destination and can you where to go and most importantly (for me) where to eat.

I’m highly visual and don’t want to read a lot of text to get the gist of what I want to see and do in a new place.  I like that this site is highly visual.

I immediately started using Gogobot to create my trip, then started adding to my list of “things to do”.

I’ve found that other guides often highlight the most popular sites to visit, but if you’re not really into that type of attraction, you might not get the most of your vacation.  So if you’re in Paris and you don’t LOVE art, you’re not going to have a wonderful time touring around the Louvre for five hours.  Gogobot allows you to filter attractions by various categories so if you’re really into sports, you’ll find the most popular sporting attractions in your travel destination.  Love this!

Of course, if you want to look at the most popular attractions not filtered by category, you can do that too.  I looked at the most popular first and chose a few of the most popular like the Grand Place.

You can also drill down further by looking at what people have said about specific attractions — why they rated it what they did and you can also get little insider tips.

After choosing a few attractions, I used the categories to drill down further.

And that’s where I found the Brussels Winter Wonders which is basically a Christmas market with tons of lights.

This is something I can totally get into.  I’m such a kid when it comes to Christmas.

I also found a really cool hotel called The Dominican Hotel, but then I saw the nightly rates for this time of year, which is probably a bit outside our price range.  Even still, I’m sure I was getting the best rate because Gogobot looks at three different hotel sites to make sure I’m getting the best hotel price.

A little clicking around and I figured out that Gogobot allows you to sort by price range and by stars and I found a much more reasonable hotel that was well rated.

Gogobot also allows you to post questions and get advice and post to several different social media outlets besides Gogobot so you can get advice from friends who don’t use the site.

And then there’s the restaurant search tool which filters all restaurants primarily by popularity and then allows you to filter them by cuisine.

So far, the restaurants I’ve chosen to visit based on the information from Gogobot are:

-Delirium Cafe: described as a “beer house”
– Aux Armes du Bruxxelles: described as traditional French/Belgium cuisine
– Chez Leon: described as one of the best places to get the Belgium favorite of mussels and beer

I like that as I see things I want to visit, I simply click “add to my trip” — no creating a document elsewhere that I have to add to and then reference later.  Everything is stored right there in Gogobot.

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Gogobot allows you to tap into the knowledge of your friends when planning a trip anywhere. You can find like-minded travelers and inspiration for your next vacation, creating easy-to-use wishlists you can return to again and again.

And when you are not in vacation mode or planning a trip, you can discover hidden gems in your own neighborhood for entertaining guests or a weekend staycation.

The best part? Every page on Gogobot is personalized. You can see reviews from your friends and people you are following at the top, which allows you to weed out the noise and fraudulent reviews that become a problem on other review sites. Check out Gogobot today!

This is a sponsored post written by me on behalf of Gogobot. The opinions and text are all mine.