I have stayed at the Cascade Louise twice and would happily go there again. The staff are professional and welcoming, the rooms are clean and well-equipped, and breakfast is what one expects at a hotel in continental Europe.

The hotel is in a relatively quiet street about 100m from Hôtel des Monnaies / Munthof metro station.

My most recent stay was affected by a water pipe that burst in the hotel during the night. This meant that when I got up there was no water! Nevertheless, the staff were coping brilliantly in difficult circumstances, serving a slightly reduced breakfast in the lobby, despite ceiling tiles being down and buckets being dotted around the place!

My single grumble about the hotel is that it still uses sheets and blankets, rather than duvets. The housekeeping staff obviously have a competition to see who can tuck the sheets in most tightly when making up the beds!

Definitely the worst experience of my life. Located in a good area it resembles just what it was a couple of years ago. The reception is made of unprofessional people, unable to deal with clients. The rooms are clearly old and not well-maintained. The bed cover was burnt and the moquette full of dust. Wi-fi Internet connection comes for 12 Euro per day and was very bed. That is ridicolous for a 4 star hotel. In the end the receptionist were even unable to print the invoice. I asked for get me awake, and they forgot. I will never never get back there.

This was the third different hotel our annual group trip to Brussels had used, and after a prolonged and difficult booking process during which we had anticipated being accommodated at a number of other hotels, we were finally booked into the Cascade Louise. Our expectations were not high, having read through most of the reviews of this place, and seeing it ranked 155 out of 210 Brussels hotels was not exactly encouraging either.

It's certainly not what you could call centrally located, being situated just outside the 'inner ring boulevard', and this was one of our main concerns, given that we like to be able to have but a short stroll to all the many central bars and cafes around the Grand Place. However, if you're arriving via Eurostar, which we were, it's a very easy journey indeed (just two stops on the metro - Line 2). The hotel is then no more than 150 metres away (just make sure you take the right exit from the metro station, otherwise you will emerge on the wrong side of the ring road).

The immediate neighbourhood is okay - mostly residential, with a few street corner shops, though it gets a bit less salubrious towards Gare du Midi. If you head up towards Avenue Louise, taking the street which runs up the left side of the 'Friendly Night Shop' you will come to a pedestrianised part of the street where there are maybe 20-30 restaurants (not at all obvious that these exist until you get quite close), which provide a pretty good range of cuisines, so very handy if you don't feel like trekking all the way into the city centre.

It's about a 30-minute walk to the Grand Place, which we did several times, so not insuperably far, though in iffy weather you might prefer to resort to the metro. It's also not all that far to the Gare du Midi, which we walked to on the Sunday morning, since the weather was lovely, and we were travelling light, en route to Tournai for a day's visit. The Sunday morning market just before you reach the station is lively, colourful and well worth a look.

The hotel is what I would call inoffensively neutral. It won't win any awards for cutting-edge style, but the rooms (for once) are a decent size and the standard of cleanliness was good. Our bathroom had a good-sized bath, which is a bit of a bonus, and everything worked as it should. We had a room overlooking the inner courtyard, and it was gratifyingly quiet. Our friends who had rooms overlooking the street didn't seem to find it unduly noisy either.

The good-sized flat screen TV appeared to be almost new, and could receive as many channels as you are likely to want, including CNN, BBC1 and BBC World News. If there was a quibble with the room facilities it would be the very feeble air-conditioning system, which we needed to make use of during an unseasonably warm weekend. This needed to be left on all night in order to keep the room temperature down to a tolerable level, and as it automatically went off when the room key card was removed from its wall slot, we adopted the habit of leaving one of our cards in the slot when heading out for the evening, to avoid returning to a sauna.

Breakfast is a steepish 14 euros, but there aren't any obvious alternative places in the immediate vicinity, so unless you are one of those strange types who can face the day without any sustenance, you'll probably have to resort to the buffet (described as 'American' - whatever that may mean). It was okay - though no pancakes or maple syrup to be seen - and I've had a lot worse elsewhere.

In summary, if you're looking for somewhere to lay your head in reasonable comfort, and where you won't keep banging your shins on the furniture, this place is fine. I wouldn't pick it for a romantic getaway, and it seems that business travellers find it lacking, but for a group of friends not looking for the Ritz and prepared to do plenty of walking to get around Brussels, it does what it says on the tin. If I could give it three and a half 'blobs' I would.

Came for one night on business and needed Internet access. Am used to having to pay through the nose for Wifi in Brussels but given that the rooms have no Internet access other than wifi, when their system went down I was stuck.

A/C struggled to make room comfortable and the minibar was four very sad looking cans

Neighbourhood not much to write home about either