Belgium, one day at a time.
Which Bruges day trip gives you the town instead of the coach park. Which chocolate workshop lets you temper your own. What four Trappist glasses cost. Every tour in Belgium, reviewed.
In Belgium, nothing sits more than two hours from Brussels.
Brussels for the Grand Place and the chocolate houses. Bruges for the canals. Ghent for the guild fronts and the castle in the middle of town. Antwerp for Rubens and the diamond quarter. Then the days most itineraries skip.
Chocolate, beer, and the fries Belgium refuses to call French.
Every country runs a food tour. Belgium runs three national arguments, and you can book your way into all of them in one afternoon.
The Chocolate Workshop
Jean Neuhaus filled the first praline in a Brussels arcade in 1912 and the country has been arguing about who does it best ever since. The workshops hand you a marble slab and a bowl of couverture: temper it, pipe it, mould it, box whatever survives the walk home. Brussels runs the most sessions, Bruges the smallest.
- 1Choco-Story Brussels: Chocolate Museum Entrance with Tasting★★★★★★★★★★ 4.3 · 4,883 reviews
- 2Hungry Mary’s Famous Beer and Chocolate Tour in Brussels★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 2,258 reviews
- 3Choco-Story Museum with Audio Guide and Tastings★★★★★★★★★★ 4.2 · 1,825 reviews
The Belgian Beer Table
Belgian beer culture sits on the UNESCO intangible heritage list, and the country brews more styles than it has provinces. Lambic still sours in open vats in the Zenne valley, abbey breweries turn out dubbels and tripels, and saison was brewed to keep farmhands going through harvest. A tasting is three or four glasses with someone who can tell you why a gueuze tastes of cider and cellar.
- 1Guided Tour & Boat Ride with Optional Beer Tasting★★★★★★★★★★ 4.4 · 3,894 reviews
- 2Belgian Beer Tasting in Brussels★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 1,280 reviews
- 3Belgian Waffle-Making Workshop with Beer Tasting★★★★★★★★★★ 4.9 · 960 reviews
Waffles and Fries
There are two Belgian waffles and they are not interchangeable: the rectangular Brussels waffle, light and dusted with sugar, and the dense Liege waffle studded with pearl sugar that caramelises on the iron. The fries are a separate matter — twice fried, handed over in a paper cone at a frituur, with a sauce list that runs past twenty.
- 1Historical Tour with Chocolate & Waffle Tasting★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 1,206 reviews
- 2Historical Walking Tour with Chocolate & Waffle Tasting★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 1,165 reviews
- 3Belgian Waffle-Making Workshop with Beer Tasting★★★★★★★★★★ 4.9 · 960 reviews
The tours Belgium sells out first.
The full Belgium list →Atomium tickets, the Bruges-and-Ghent double from Brussels, the boat that does the medieval centre in fifty minutes. More travellers book these than anything else in the country.
1
Atomium Entry Ticket with Design Museum Ticket
Atomium ticket plus Design Museum Brussels. Enjoy 360-degree views, light shows, and Belgian design in one day with QR entry.
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, and that is when it is best.
The coaches unload around ten, walk the Markt and pull out before dinner. Take the canal boat at opening or a walking tour after dark and the same lanes hold about forty people.
What a day in Belgium actually costs.
A canal boat costs about what two coffees cost. A private guide across the Salient is a different afternoon entirely. Every tour on the site, grouped by what you pay.
Canal boats, museum entry, waffle stops and the walking tours that run on tips.
The full day out: Bruges and Ghent from Brussels, chocolate workshops, tastings with four glasses.
Private guides, minibus days across the Flanders battlefields, and the small groups that cap at eight.
Belgium is wet about two hundred days a year. Book indoors and stop watching the sky.
The drizzle is not a season here, it is the baseline. Which is fine, because almost everything Belgium is famous for happens under a roof: a marble slab and a bowl of couverture, four glasses in a cellar bar, the Magritte rooms, a brewery still working in the middle of town.
Ghent kept its river. Antwerp kept its port.
Half an hour from Brussels, Ghent lines the Graslei with guild fronts and drops a moated castle in the middle of the shopping streets. Antwerp is bigger and rougher: a cathedral hung with Rubens, the diamond quarter behind the station, and a station that is worth the trip on its own.
The Ypres Salient is half an hour from the coast and the fields still give up shells.
Four years of fighting left a ring of cemeteries, craters and preserved trenches around Ypres, and every spring the ploughs turn up more ordnance. Tours run out of Bruges and Brussels as long days with a guide who knows which names sit on which memorial. The Last Post sounds under the Menin Gate at eight, every evening.
- 1Great War Flanders Fields Minibus Tour w/ Lunchfrom $130
- 2Flanders Fields Remembrance Tour from Brusselsfrom $113
- 3Flanders Fields Remembrance Tour from Brugesfrom $95
Belgium is small enough to sleep in one city and see the rest.
Trains leave Brussels for Ghent, Bruges and Antwerp several times an hour, and the country is short enough that a day trip is a train ride rather than an expedition. Book the room once and move on rails.
- about 30 minutesBrussels → Ghent50-Minute Medieval Center Guided Boat Trip
- about 45 minutesBrussels → AntwerpHistorical Walking Tour: Legends of Antwerp
- about 60 minutesBrussels → BrugesSmall Group Boat Cruise and Guided Walking Tour
- about 65 minutesBrussels → LiegeLiege Walking Tours
- about 90 minutesBruges → YpresFrom IEPER Private 4-hour Tour of the Ypres Battlefield
By city — wherever you are sleeping
By experience — chocolate, beer, canal or battlefield?
Belgium, end to end, in six days.
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