Belgium fits in a weekend. Book it like one.
Which Bruges canal boat to queue for. What a chocolate workshop costs by the bench. Whether Ghent or Antwerp earns the spare afternoon. Reviews of every tour you can book in Belgium.
Ghent by boatfrom $12
Bruges in a dayfrom $57
Chocolate, tastedfrom $16
Beer and friesfrom $119 The four bookings a first Belgian trip is built on.
A day out of Brussels, half an hour on a Ghent canal, a bench in a chocolate kitchen and a morning in the Salient. What each costs, and what the people who took it say.
01The day tripGuided Day Trip to Bruges and GhentBruges and Ghent in one run from Brussels, with the driving and the tickets handled. The single most booked day in the country.
02Fifty minutes50-Minute Medieval Center Guided Boat TripThe medieval centre of Ghent from the water, which is the angle the city was built to be seen from. Cheap enough to do twice.
03The kitchen benchBelgian Chocolate Making Workshop with TastingsTemper, pipe and box your own pralines in central Brussels. Sittings are small, so this is the one to lock in before you fly.
04The SalientIn Flanders Fields and Passchendaele Half Day Morning TourPasschendaele and the In Flanders Fields ground on a half-day from Ypres, with a guide who works the cemeteries and the maps.
Belgium sells chocolate three ways. They cost very different money.
A museum ticket with tastings at the end, a walking tour that eats its way between six shops, or two hours at a marble bench making the things yourself. Same subject, three afternoons, three prices.
Brussels, then whichever small city your train reaches first.
Bruges is an hour from Brussels, Ghent forty minutes, Antwerp thirty-five. Liege and Ypres sit at the two far edges and repay the longer ride. Six starting points, and the best day out in each.
Eleven hundred Belgian beers, and a guide who orders for you.
Trappist ales poured at the right temperature in the right glass, a tasting cellar under a Brussels pavement, a brewery still working inside the Bruges ring. These three take more travellers than anything else pouring in the country.
The days out more travellers book than anything else in Belgium.
Every Belgian tour we have reviewed →Eight bookings that carry the country, with what each costs and what earns it the slot.
1
Atomium Entry Ticket with Design Museum Ticket
Enter Brussels’ famous Atomium, built for the 1958 World Fair and shaped like an iron crystal enlarged 165 billion times. Ride the lift for 360-degree views, explore permanent and temporary exhibitions, then walk eight minutes to the Design Museum Brussels and its large Plastics Design Collection. Bring headphones and a charged smartphone for the included game.
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
Hop-On Hop-Off Bus Tour
from $29
Bruges empties at five. Book around the coach parties.
The Markt at midday belongs to the day trippers from Brussels and Paris. The canals at nine, the belfry stairs before the queue and the streets behind the Beguinage after the last coach leaves do not.
Everything bookable in Bruges →
What a day out in Belgium actually costs.
Every tour on the site, grouped by price. A canal boat and a museum ticket together still come in under the price of dinner.
Canal boats, city walks, museum entries and the chocolate tastings at the end of them.
The full days: Bruges and Ghent from Brussels, the Salient from Ypres, making workshops.
Private guides, chauffeured battlefield days and the small-group tastings that cap numbers.
Brussels: one square, then pick your afternoon.
Everything in Brussels →
The Grand Place takes an hour and costs nothing. What fills the rest of the day is a choice between a dated ticket on the edge of town, a chocolate counter in the Sablon and a coach out to the canal cities.
Atomium, Mini-Europe, or the museum card
The spheres are a twenty-minute tram ride out and the lift up meters its slots. The card versions bundle Mini-Europe or the Design Museum next door, which is the only reason to pay more than the plain ticket.
A museum tasting, or the Sablon counters
Choco-Story runs on entry tickets with a tasting at the end and suits a wet afternoon. The guided shop walks cost more and are worth it if you want somebody to explain what separates the four makers on the same street.
Bruges and Ghent, driven and ticketed
Both cities in one day is a long ride and a real itinerary, and it is what most people book. The versions that add a canal boat in Bruges are the ones worth the extra; the ones that add a third stop are not.
Three things Belgium does that nowhere else does the same way.
Canal cities and good beer exist elsewhere. Ground fought over for four years and kept as it was, a couverture bench you are allowed to work at, and a river gorge with a fortress over it do not.
Flanders Fields
The ground east of Ypres held the line from 1914 to 1918 and the cemeteries, craters and concrete shelters are still where they were. Tours run out of Ypres and Bruges in half days and full days, usually taking in Tyne Cot, Passchendaele ridge and a preserved trench line. The Last Post has sounded under the Menin Gate every evening since 1928; it is free to attend and takes about twenty minutes.
- 1Great War Flanders Fields Minibus Tour w/ Lunch★★★★★★★★★★ 4.9 · 1,257 reviews
- 2Flanders Fields Remembrance Tour from Brussels★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 334 reviews
- 3Flanders Fields Remembrance Tour from Bruges★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 207 reviews
The chocolate workshop
Belgian praline making is a trade with rules, and the workshops teach the real ones: tempering on marble so the shell snaps, piping ganache that sets without cracking, moulding and boxing what you made. Sittings run to a dozen benches at most, which is why they sell out first in the week before a holiday weekend. You leave with a box and, more usefully, with an opinion about what you are buying in the shops.
- 1Belgian Chocolate Making Workshop with Tastings★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 1,629 reviews
- 22.5-Hour Chocolate Museum Visit with Workshop★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · 1,263 reviews
- 3Belgian Waffle-Making Workshop with Beer Tasting★★★★★★★★★★ 4.9 · 960 reviews
Dinant and the Ardennes
An hour and a half south of Brussels the flat country stops. Dinant sits under a limestone cliff with a citadel on top, a bulb-domed church at the waterline and the saxophone museum of the man who invented it. Day trips pair it with Luxembourg or with the Ardennes forest behind, where the Battle of the Bulge tours run in winter conditions much like the ones they describe.
- 1Luxembourg and Dinant Day Trip from Brussels★★★★★★★★★★ 4.0 · 1,474 reviews
- 2Remembrance Tour: The Battle of the Bulge in the Ardennes★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 51 reviews
- 3Small Group Dinant’s, Castle and Beer Monastery Expedition★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 42 reviews
Four Belgian bookings that will not wait for the morning.
Most of this country can be arranged over breakfast. These four run on sittings, minibus seats and a season, and they close well before you get to the counter.
- 01Belgian Chocolate Making Workshop with TastingsA dozen benches to a sitting, and school holidays take them a fortnight out. Nobody is squeezed in at the door.
- 02Great War Flanders Fields Minibus Tour w/ LunchOne minibus, one morning departure, and the guide caps the group so everyone can hear at the cemeteries.
- 03Atomium Entry Ticket with Design Museum TicketEntry is by dated ticket and the lift to the top sphere meters how many go up per slot. Turning up at noon in August means the afternoon.
- 04Small Group Boat Cruise and Guided Walking TourThe Bruges canal boats stop for maintenance in deep winter and run to daylight for the rest of it. In December the last sailing leaves mid-afternoon.
It rains in Belgium. Book the indoor half of the day first.
Two hundred days a year carry some rain, which is why the country is so good at interiors. Chocolate kitchens, tasting cellars, museums built into guild houses and escape rooms with no windows at all. Walk the streets when it clears, not the other way round.
By city - Flanders, Brussels and Wallonia
By kind of day - bench, boat, cellar or battlefield
Brussels, Bruges, Ghent, Antwerp: the week almost everybody does first.
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