This was a really nice find in Brussels right next to The Grand Place. That area is full of tourists, but this quiet little coffee house just a couple blocks away didn’t have any of the bustle that is characteristic of The Grand Place. It was really refreshing to have an entire section of drinks mentioned that they made with soymilk. Brussels overall didn’t seem to be as adventurous with their non-dairy options, and soymilk is pretty much your only alternative.
Inside of Aksum
They have a decent amount of seating and the tables are a good height for working although the benches you see in the back are wooden and thus, less comfortable. I never tried any of their cakes, but they did have 2-3 of them to order. The hot chocolate (not pictured) was really good. Unfortunately there are a couple of steps to go down to the bathrooms so they are not accessible as well as being separated by gender.
While there are several outlets, only one of them seemed to be working. It’s located all the way in the back of the room.
Speed test!
Per the suggestion of a friend, there will now be speed tests for the wifi at cafes. The wifi at Aksum was pretty stable for the 2 times that we visited.
Les Cafetiers
Address:36 Rue Ferrandière, 69002 Lyon, France
Hours: M/W/Th/F: 9am-7pm, Sa: 10am-6pm, Su: 10am-5pm
Rating: 4.5/5.0
While we were in Lyon, Les Cafetiers quickly became our favorite place to work at outside of the apartment we were staying at. It was started by a couple of British guys (one of the owners is apparently a pilot for British Airways), and the staff seem to all be native English speakers, which was really convenient for us.
View of the front area of Les Cafetiers
The most important part of being able to work out of a cafe is of course the quality of its wi-fi, which in this case, was really good. The speed didn’t fluctuate. There were no random disconnections, and the information to connect was printed on the menu on each table.
There were an abundance of tables to work at, and after the lunch hour, the cafe was pretty quiet and uncrowded which made for a really comfortable environment to work in. As for outlets, there were 5/6 of them spread throughout the cafe, and all the indoor seating was within distance of at least 1 outlet. The outside seats didn’t have any outlets that I could see. Sometimes people would smoke at the outdoor seats and the smoke would waft in.
The drinks menu at Les Cafetiers
They serve all your expected coffee types (I assume anyway since I’m not actually a regular coffee drinker), but they’ve also got a nice selection of teas. I ordered the hot chocolate every time and was pleasantly surprised to learn that they could replace the milk with oat milk since I’m lactose intolerant. Turns out oat milk is pretty tasty. I enjoyed oat milk much more than conventional soy/almond milk replacements that are usually offered (although I think this has more to do with the quality of the soy/almond milk options out there rather than soy/almond milk themselves.
Hot chocolate with oat milkDelicious carrot cake!
In addition to drinks, they had a selection of pastries. You can also order salads although we always ate lunch before coming here to work so we never did. We had the carrot cake and the cheesecake (eaten too quickly to be pictured) which were both fantastic.
There is only one bathroom so it’s non-gendered, and it’s kept fairly clean. It’s on the same level as the rest of the shop without a step to access although because that area is a little narrow, it might not be entirely accessible.
Do be aware that they are super busy up until about the end of the lunch period. It’s not a good place to work until about 1:30pm. They are probably also fine in the morning before lunch, but we’re not up that early ever.
