Bruges, Ghent and Antwerp are an hour from Brussels. Plan accordingly.
Which canal boat leaves from where in Bruges. What a chocolate workshop in Brussels costs and how much of it you actually make. Whether the Flanders Fields day runs better out of Ypres or out of Bruges. Reviews of every tour you can book in Belgium.
01The classic day outBruges and Ghent – Belgium’s Fairytale Cities – from Brusselsfrom $59
02The chocolate oneChoco-Story Brussels: Chocolate Museum Entrance with Tastingfrom $18
03The beer oneBelgian Beer Tasting in Brusselsfrom $36
04The cheap hour50-Minute Medieval Center Guided Boat Tripfrom $12Museum, tasting walk, or making your own: three ways to do Belgian chocolate.
Every second shop window in Brussels and Bruges is pralines, which makes choosing harder rather than easier. Three formats are worth paying for. Here is what each costs and how long it takes.
Bruges gets the coaches. The other five are the reason to stay a week.
A belfry and a boat in Bruges, a castle in the middle of Ghent, Rubens and the docks in Antwerp, the Salient outside Ypres, a river town in the south, and Brussels holding the middle. Pick a base, then the day out that earns it.
In Belgium beer arrives as a tasting flight, not a pint.
Lambic brewed in the Brussels valley, Trappist ale from the abbeys, and a differently shaped glass for every one of them. The tastings, brewery visits and cellar walks below, priced.
The Atomium, the Bruges boat, and the coach that does both cities in a day.
Every tour in Belgium →Nine days out, priced, with what travellers say about each one.
1
Atomium Entry Ticket with Design Museum Ticket
Review the Atomium and Design Museum combo in Brussels, with practical tips on views, exhibits, queues, stairs, timing, and value.
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
Small Group Boat Cruise and Guided Walking Tour
from $51
8
Entry Ticket to Mini-Europe
from $23
9
Walking Tour, Canal Boat Trip w/Beer Tasting Option
from $41
From Brussels, every other Belgian city is a day trip.
Nothing here is more than a couple of hours from the capital, so a base in Brussels buys you the whole country. These are the days out worth the ticket.
BrugesThe canal town everyone comes for, an hour up the line.GhentFewer coaches than Bruges and the same medieval skyline.
AntwerpRubens, the river, and the quarter where the diamonds are cut.
Flanders FieldsThe Salient, the cemeteries and the Menin Gate, from Bruges or Ypres.
Dinant and the ArdennesA citadel above the Meuse and the hills behind it. Bruges is small, flat and busiest between eleven and four.
The belfry, the bend in the canal at Rozenhoedkaai, and a boat that takes half an hour and is worth every minute. Come early or stay the night: the day coaches leave around five and the town becomes a different place.
Every Bruges day out →
Belgium priced: from a boat ticket to a private guide.
Every tour on the site, grouped by what it costs. The cheap end is not the weak end here — a canal boat through the middle of Ghent is twelve dollars.
Canal boats, museum entries, storytelling walks and the tickets you can buy on the morning.
Chocolate and beer tastings, half-day city walks, and the coach days between cities.
Full days with lunch, the Flanders Fields minibus, workshops and private guiding.
It rains in Belgium. The country was built around that.
Grey is the default setting here, which is why so much of the good stuff has a roof over it: chocolate workshops, brewery cellars, museum halls and the glass arcades in the middle of Brussels. A wet forecast reorders the day rather than cancelling it.
Three Belgian afternoons with no equivalent anywhere else.
Pralines and waffles are exported to every airport on earth. Making them yourself, in a Brussels kitchen or a Bruges workshop, is not. Neither is a town that still tells its own ghost stories out loud.
Tempering your own pralines
Belgian praline chocolate is a shell moulded first and filled second, which is why the workshops all start at a slab of warm couverture and a thermometer. You temper it, fill the moulds, choose the centres and wait for the shells to set hard enough to knock out. Everybody leaves with a box, and everybody undersells how much of it was actually their own hands.
- 1Belgian Chocolate Making Workshop with Tastings★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 1,629 reviews
- 2Belgian Waffle-Making Workshop with Beer Tasting★★★★★★★★★★ 4.9 · 960 reviews
- 32.5-Hour Belgian Chocolate Making Workshop★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 933 reviews
Brussels waffle or Liège waffle
They are two different things and Belgians are clear about which is which. The Brussels waffle is rectangular, light, made from a batter and eaten with a fork under sugar or fruit. The Liège waffle is heavier, made from a dough studded with pearl sugar that caramelises on the iron, and it is street food you hold in one hand. Order the wrong one and nobody corrects you, which is worse.
- 1Historical Walking Tour with Chocolate & Waffle Tasting★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 1,165 reviews
- 2Belgian Waffle-Making Workshop with Beer Tasting★★★★★★★★★★ 4.9 · 960 reviews
- 3Brussels Walking and Tasting Tour (Beers,Chocolates&Fries/Waffle)★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 929 reviews
The legend walks
These towns kept their medieval street plans, and with them a full inventory of executions, plagues, guild feuds and hauntings that guides now walk you through after sunset. Bruges, Ghent, Antwerp and Brussels each run their own version. The lanes are lit and half empty at that hour, which does most of the work before anybody says a word.
- 1Historical Walking Tour: Legends of Bruges★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 2,541 reviews
- 2Historical Walking Tour: Legends of Antwerp★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 1,837 reviews
- 3Historical Walking Tour: Legends of Gent★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 1,761 reviews
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