Yelping the Lounge

Since I’m now apparently a business class snob I feel justified in not just reveling at the magic of business class lounges, but also critiquing them. Here’s how the one in Brussles stands up: 

Nice food, nice coffee maker, nice design… okay I really just want to talk about the bad stuff.

Demerit 1:  Bathroom located outside the lounge, down the hall.  This is annoying because when you want to use all your free toiletries from the plane to freshen up, you have to haul your carry-on with you (or be sketchy and leave it in the lounge unattended and hope that “see something, say something” isn’t a thing in Belgium… which is what I did).

Demerit 2:  There is no designated sleeping area. This means the snoring people (i.e. me) are mixed among the business people doing important business things.  I’ve written before about the awkwardness of sleeping with strangers in public but it’s way less awkward if it is in a designated area. While I definitely look like I belong on a prairie and not in a business class lounge, I am ever thankful for my giant maxi skirt which avoids too many accidental exposures while sleeping in a fully lit area with strangers.

Demerit 3: There is one teaser reclining chair.  There are probably 50 café chairs with tables, 20 upholstered seats, and 20 upholstered love seats, and then there is ONE reclining chair.  That means at any given time, one person gets to be comfortably sleeping.  The rest of us, cramped up in awkward supine positions on love seats stare greedily at them and lift our eye masks every time a flight is called just in case that lucky reclining chair person vacates so we can jump in.  No luck for me, I was asleep during the crucial moments and only witnessed a rainbow of different people on the throne.

Demerit 4: Normally I wouldn't even expect this but since the lounge at JFK made an announcement for the boarding of my flight to Brussles, I sort of thought that the lounge at Brussles would make an announcement about the boarding of my flight to Entebbe.  Totally wrong. And this is not to say that they didn't announce other flights, they did-- just not mine. I was deep into reading my novel and realized boarding had already started AND I was in the wrong terminal.  Nice to start the second leg of a trip with an adrenaline-pumping run through an airport.

But I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that the coffee machine had a great decaf cappuccino.