Brussels to Bruges is an hour. Belgium fits in a week.
Which canal boat in Bruges is worth the queue. What a chocolate workshop in Brussels really costs. Whether Ghent earns the spare day ahead of Antwerp. Reviews of every tour you can book in Belgium.
The four bookings a first week in Belgium hangs off.
Both fairytale cities in one day, a Bruges canal morning, an afternoon at a chocolate bench, and the view down over Brussels. What each costs, and what the people who took it say.
01Both cities in a dayGuided Day Trip to Bruges and GhentBruges and Ghent from Brussels, in one coach day. The compromise almost every short trip ends up making, and it works.
02The Bruges morningWalking Tour, Canal Boat Trip w/Beer Tasting OptionA walk through the Markt and then straight onto the water, before the coaches arrive. The beer tasting is an option worth taking.
03The chocolate benchBelgian Chocolate Making Workshop with TastingsTwo hours tempering, moulding and filling in Brussels, and the box you carry out is yours. Book the session, not the day.
04Over the rooftopsAtomium Entry Ticket with Design Museum TicketUp inside the steel spheres for the view across the city, with the Design Museum next door on the same ticket.
The Belgian afternoon: a bench, a tasting room or a fryer.
Belgium sells more of this than of anything else it does. Four ways to spend the afternoon, what it costs to sit down at each, and which city suits it.
Four Belgian cities on one train line, and two worth the detour.
The country is small enough that the question is not which city but which order. A capital with comic books on its gable ends, the canal town everybody has seen photographs of, a student city between two rivers, a port with Rubens in it, and the two most itineraries skip.
Bruges is small, full by eleven, and worth the early alarm.
The Markt, the belfry stairs and a canal boat that leaves from under a bridge you would otherwise walk straight past. Get all three done before the coaches arrive from Brussels, Amsterdam and Paris, and the town is briefly yours.
Every Belgian old town is twenty minutes end to end.
Which is why the guided walk is the standard first booking here. Whose guild house is whose, which facades are nineteenth-century copies, and where the good beer is when the walk finishes. The evening versions go somewhere darker.
The days out most travellers in Belgium end up taking.
Every Belgian tour we have reviewed →Eight bookings that carry more travellers between them than the rest of the catalogue, and what earns each one its place.
1
Atomium Entry Ticket with Design Museum Ticket
Visit Brussels’ Atomium, the giant iron-crystal pavilion built for the 1958 World’s Fair, for city views, light displays, and temporary exhibitions. Your ticket also covers the Design Museum Brussels, an eight-minute walk away, including its 2,000-piece Plastics Design Collection.
From · $19
Read our review →
2
Guided Day Trip to Bruges and Ghent
from $55
3
Bruges & Ghent Day Tour – 2 Fairytale Cities
from $57
4
50-Minute Medieval Center Guided Boat Trip
from $12
5
Choco-Story Brussels: Chocolate Museum Entrance with Tasting
from $18
6
Bruges and Ghent – Belgium’s Fairytale Cities – from Brussels
from $59
7
Entry Ticket to Mini-Europe
from $23
8
Walking Tour, Canal Boat Trip w/Beer Tasting Option
from $41
Ghent is the city everyone plans to skip and then wishes they had stayed in.
A castle with a moat sitting in the middle of the shopping streets, the Graslei quay lit up along the water after dark, and a student population that keeps the bars open long after Bruges has gone quiet. The boat here runs fifty minutes and costs less than the famous one.
Every Ghent day out →
What a day out in Belgium actually costs.
Every tour on the site, grouped by what it costs. A good number of the best ones come in under the price of lunch on the Grand Place.
Museum entries, the canal boats, chocolate shop crawls and most of the guided walks.
Full days out: both fairytale cities from Brussels, the Flanders Fields minibus, a workshop with a box to carry home.
Private guides, a car with a driver, and the long days that cross a border and come back the same night.
Three things Belgium has that nowhere else does.
Old towns and good beer exist all over Europe. A capital that paints its comic books on its gable ends, a museum devoted to the chip, and a guided walk built entirely out of what went wrong do not.
The comic-book walls
Brussels started putting Tintin, Lucky Luke and the Smurfs on the blank sides of its buildings in the 1990s and never stopped; there are more than fifty murals now, most within half an hour of the Grand Place on foot. The best of them are jokes about the street they stand on, which is the part a map will not tell you.
- 1The comic book walls walking tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 38 reviews
- 2Brussels through its comics murals★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 25 reviews
- 3Comic Book Tour in Brussels★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 14 reviews
Fries, done properly
The chip is Belgian, it is fried twice, and Bruges keeps a museum in a fourteenth-century building to make the point. The tasting versions put a paper cone in your hand somewhere between the beer and the chocolate, which is more or less how a Belgian afternoon arranges itself anyway.
- 1Brussels Walking and Tasting Tour (Beers,Chocolates&Fries/Waffle)★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 929 reviews
- 2Frietmuseum Entry Ticket★★★★★★★★★★ 4.2 · 652 reviews
- 3Frietmuseum Entrance Ticket★★★★★★★★★★ 3.5 · 148 reviews
The dark side of the old town
Every Flemish city runs its own version: the executions, the plague years, the trials, and the parts of the guild-house story the daytime walk leaves out. They start once the terraces have cleared, which happens to be the hour these towns photograph best.
- 1Evening Tour: The Dark Side of Bruges★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 956 reviews
- 2Evening Tour of the Dark Side of Gent★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 646 reviews
- 3Evening Tour: The Dark Side of Brussels★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 435 reviews
Four Belgian bookings that will not wait for you.
Most of this country can be sorted over breakfast the day before. These four run on timed slots, a single departure and boat timetables that stop for the winter.
- 01Atomium Entry Ticket with Design Museum TicketEntry runs on timed slots and the lift up to the top sphere is the bottleneck. You choose your hour when you book, not at the door.
- 02Great War Flanders Fields Minibus Tour w/ LunchThese go as small minibus groups, once a day, out of Ypres and Bruges. There is no later departure to catch instead.
- 03Belgian Chocolate Making Workshop with TastingsA workshop bench holds a fixed number of places, so what you are booking is the session rather than the day.
- 0450-Minute Medieval Center Guided Boat TripThe Ghent and Bruges canal boats run to a timetable and tie up for the winter. Check the last sailing before you plan an afternoon around it.
It rains in Belgium. The country has spent centuries building the indoor answer.
Grey afternoons here are the normal weather, not bad luck, and everything is arranged around them: chocolate benches, tasting cellars, brewery floors and museums you can reach without getting properly wet. Do the outdoor half early and keep these for the rest of the day.
By city — Flanders, Brussels and Wallonia
By kind of day — bench, boat, walk or battlefield
Brussels, Ghent, Bruges, Antwerp: the run the train timetable writes for you.
Latest from Brussels, Bruges, Ghent and Antwerp.
Everything else we have written →
Private Transfer from Brussels Airport to the city of Brussels
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From Ypres, The Christmas Truce to Passchendaele Ypres Based WW1 private tour
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Luxury Minivan from Brussels airport to the city of Brussels
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Transfer Brussels Airport (BRU) –> City Center 1-3 PAX (ONE WAY)
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Virtual reality adventure in Brussels in Virtual Zone
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Market Tour and Cooking Lesson with a Belgian Gourmet Meal in a Brussels Home
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“Hidden Brugge” Photo Tour – 2hr open city tour & workshop
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“Edges of Brugge” Photo Tour – 2hr open city tour & workshop
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