Chocolate in Brussels, canals in Bruges.
Which chocolate workshop lets you temper your own. Which Bruges boat leaves from the quiet quay. What a Flanders Fields day costs and how long it runs. Every bookable tour in Belgium, reviewed.
Four Belgian cities, an hour apart.
Brussels for chocolate, museums and the Grand Place. Bruges for the canals. Ghent for the Graslei and a castle in the middle of town. Antwerp for Rubens, the docks and the diamond quarter. Trains between them run every half hour.
Brussels rewards an early start and a long lunch.
The Grand Place fills by ten, so go before. Then a chocolate workshop off the Sablon, the Art Nouveau houses out in Ixelles, and a bar with three hundred beers on the list.
The Belgian days travellers book most.
Every review →These are the tours that fill first across the country, and what each one gives you for the money.
1
Atomium Entry Ticket with Design Museum Ticket
Review of Brussels’ Atomium and Design Museum ticket, with panoramic views, light shows, Belgian design, costs, timing, and practical tips.
From · $19
Read our review →
2
From Brussels: Guided Day Trip to Bruges and Ghent
from $55
3
From Brussels: 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 when the coaches leave.
The Markt belongs to day trippers until about five. Take a canal boat early, walk the Begijnhof at dusk, and keep the chocolate museum for the rain.
All 100 Bruges tours →
Three things Belgium does better than anywhere.
Beer with a different glass for every brew, chocolate tempered in front of you, and a waffle that is two separate recipes depending on which city you order it in.
Belgian Beer
Belgium brews more styles than any country its size. Trappist ales still come out of working abbeys, lambics ferment on wild yeast that lives in the air of the Zenne valley south of Brussels, and gueuze is blended from young and old lambic in the same cellar. Every beer has its own glass and the bartender will tell you why. Tastings run two to three hours and usually cover four to six pours.
- 1Walking Tour, Canal Boat Trip w/Beer Tasting Option★★★★★★★★★★ 4.4 · 2,759 reviews
- 2Hungry Mary’s Famous Beer and Chocolate Tour in Brussels★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 2,258 reviews
- 3Belgian Beer Tasting in Brussels★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 1,280 reviews
Belgian Chocolate
The filled praline was invented in Brussels in 1912, when Jean Neuhaus stopped coating a centre and started building a shell to pour into. Workshops still teach the same tempering curve: melt it to 45 degrees, cool it to 27, work it back up to 31, and it snaps instead of smearing. You leave with a box you made yourself.
- 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
- 3Belgian Chocolate Making Workshop with Tastings★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 1,629 reviews
The Belgian Waffle
A Brussels waffle is light, rectangular and yeast-risen, eaten with icing sugar and a fork. A Liege waffle is dense and uneven, studded with pearl sugar that caramelises against the iron, and eaten in the hand. Ordering the wrong one in the wrong city is the local test, and every workshop starts by settling the argument.
- 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
A Belgian day out, by price.
Every tour on the site sorted by what it actually costs. A lot of the best of Belgium sits under the price of lunch.
Canal boats, walking tours, chocolate tastings and museum entry. Most of a good Belgian day sits here.
Guided city days, beer and chocolate workshops, and the coach out to Flanders Fields.
Private guides, chauffeured days and the long trips that cross the country and come back.
The Western Front runs through Belgium.
Ypres was rebuilt stone by stone after four years of shelling. The Menin Gate carries the names of tens of thousands of missing soldiers, and the Last Post has sounded under it every evening since 1928, apart from the years of German occupation. Further south the Ardennes forests hold the ground of the Battle of the Bulge. Tours leave from Brussels, Bruges and Ypres itself, and most take a full day.
- 1From Bruges: Great War Flanders Fields Minibus Tour w/ Lunchfrom $130
- 2Flanders Fields Remembrance Tour from Brusselsfrom $113
- 3Flanders Fields Remembrance Tour from Brugesfrom $95
Ghent and Antwerp are the two cities most Belgium trips skip.
Ghent has a medieval port quay, a castle with a moat in the middle of the centre and a student population that keeps the bars open late. Antwerp has Rubens, the tallest church tower in the Low Countries and a port that has been working since the 1500s. Both are under an hour from Brussels.
- 150-Minute Medieval Center Guided Boat Tripfrom $12
- 2Historical Walking Tour: Legends of Antwerpfrom $3
- 3Historical Walking Tour: Legends of Gentfrom $3
Belgian rain is a schedule, not a surprise.
Brussels gets rain on roughly two hundred days a year, and it turns up unannounced in July as readily as in January. The country is built for it: chocolate workshops with an apron already waiting, museums with covered courtyards, escape rooms, and beer cellars that have not seen daylight in four hundred years.
Belgium is the easiest base in Europe for a day trip.
Bruges and Ghent fit into one coach day. Dinant sits on a cliff in the Meuse valley two hours south. Amsterdam is under two hours from Brussels by train and Paris is about eighty minutes, and both are day trips people genuinely make from here. Neither is Belgian, and neither pretends to be.
No city on this site is more than two hours from Brussels.
Brussels
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Antwerp
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