Hey Jayne!
Utrecht is located very central in NL. I don't know where you live in Belgium, but it may be a good alternative for you, or just for a shopping trip.
I went to the counter last weekend. It's location is great, when you arive at Utrecht central station you can walk directly from the stationhall into a mall: 'Hoog Catharijne'. There is a Douglass in HC, this isn't the one carying MAC.
You can choose to leave centrall station and walk outside to Douglass or walk through HC, there are multiple exits to Vredenburg, from wich you can see the store, across the street. Once you see the store you'll easily spot the black outfits and counter of your favourite brand, you'll do a little dance for joy and your bf will laugh at you
There's some differences between the Douglass and Bijenkorf counters:
-The arrangement of the cabinets/tables isn't as closed at Douglass as it is in De Bijenkorf: there's a corner shaped cabinet going from the wall to the window, and I believe 3, maybe 4, free standing cabinets in the space between the corner one, so you can easily walk past and trhough everything. In the Bijenkorf I never know where I am alowed to stand and where not.
-The douglass counter doens't have it's own check out. Once you've picked your products you'll get a basket and you can stop by the other counters/displays in the store and then pay for everything at once, you will receive your items in the plastic MAC bag, I also got some parfum samples with it.
I really love this counter and think I'll visit it more often than the Rotterdam one wich is a little closer to me. It wasn't near as crowed as that one always is. Plus I really liked the MA, she liked my MU and was intrested in what I was looking for and really did some great recommendations.
Also I've had several MA's at Rotterdam who didn't know a single thing about MAC and it's collections, even if they had the display for a collection standing in front of them, they said they didn't know what I was talking about... ahummm...
This MA was great, she showed me some Paintpots, and when I said I didn't wanna buy a lot of them since there were PP coming up for springtime. She was excited that I knew about them and when I mentioned I ment Faffi, she was like: 'Wow, you know your stuff!!'. Then later on I asked about the N-collection, but she didn't know a realease date yet, I said I wanted the MSF's and named them, she almost went crazy and got so excited she showed me a file with all upcomming collection pics in it. Although I'd already seen everything on here, it was very nice of her to show it to me, as she wasn't allowed to. Strangly, Ididn't see anything in it about the N-collection! Wich scares me, maybe it won't be released at counters?
According to the MA Fafi is to be released in March (sooner than I expected)
I asked if there's a special day collection become availible. (as in USA it's Thursday and UK it's first Thursday o/t month) But she didn't know about a specific day but mostly it's the beginning of the month.
I emailed MAC today asking if the N-collection will be availible at both store and counters. And to get a release date, I'll keep you posted!
Sorry this post turned out to be HUGE....
