Itineraries & Planning Guides

61 guides

Antwerp and Bruges carry the most weight here: Antwerp gets two-day plans, a one-day old-town route and area-by-area versions, while Bruges gets day-by-day weekends and honest answers on whether one, two or three days is right. Ghent sits between them, usually paired with Bruges for a weekend or given two days of its own around the Graslei, Gravensteen and the Van Eyck altarpiece.

What trips visitors up is scale. Bruges crosses on foot in half an hour, so cramming three cities into three days leaves little behind; Leuven, Namur and Ostend each reward a single focused day, and Ypres needs more than one if the battlefields matter. Most plans start with one city done properly and grow by train, with Eurostar reaching Brussels-Midi and SNCB covering the rest.

Practical questions recur across the country: the euro and paying for things, Dutch in Flanders against French in Liège and Namur, and tipping settled by rounding up. Costs vary enough between cities to shape where you base yourself for four days.