Taxi from Lille to Brussels

The train is good. It is the ends that are the problem

Nobody books this because the rail service is bad — it is not. They book it because of what happens at each end of it. A taxi to Lille-Europe, a wait, a train, then Brussels-Midi with your luggage and a queue for a cab in a station that is not known for being pleasant to arrive at.

Door to door removes all of that. You leave from your hotel, your office or your home at a time you chose rather than one the timetable chose, and you arrive at the door of the building you have a meeting in. With a briefcase and a suit bag that is worth something. With two of you and a deadline it is usually worth more than the fare difference. One way to Brussels starts at €200 for the whole car as a guide. The figure that binds is the one on your quote, which is free, comes in writing, and does not move once you have accepted it.

The European quarter, and everything around it

A good share of this work is people going to the Commission, the Parliament, a permanent representation or one of the trade associations and law firms clustered around Schuman and Luxembourg. Those addresses are straightforward to reach by car and tedious to reach with luggage by any other means.

Give us the street address rather than the institution — the buildings are large, the entrances are not always where the name suggests, and security arrangements vary. If you tell us where you are expected we will put you at the right door.

Brussels Airport as well as the city

Zaventem is the other half of this route. For an early departure out of Brussels the drive from Lille is often the only way to be there at the hour you need to be, and it is a great deal more restful than a first train and a connection.

Tell us the terminal and the flight when you book. If you are arriving rather than leaving, give us the flight number and we track it — a car that is already there when a delayed flight lands is the entire reason for booking one in advance.

Charleroi is a different airport in a different direction and is covered separately on our French site. And if it is Bruges or Ghent you are heading for rather than the capital, that is a different day with a different price.

Arriving on Eurostar, leaving the same day

We work out of 135 Rue Solférino in central Lille, so a pickup at Lille-Europe is a short repositioning rather than a journey in itself. Some of this work is a single leg. A lot of it is a return in one day: in on an early Eurostar to Lille-Europe, out to Brussels, meetings, and back to Lille for the evening train to London. We can hold the car for the day rather than quoting two separate journeys, which usually works out better and certainly works out simpler.

If the day overruns — and it does — the driver waits. Say when you book that the finish time is uncertain, and we will price it so that an extra hour is not a negotiation.

The same arrangement covers the long runs in the other direction: Lille to Disneyland Paris is the other journey we are asked for most often in English, and it is priced the same way.