Bruges and Ghent — Private Day Trip from Amsterdam

Bruges — a city that got lucky

Bruges was one of the richest cities in Europe, then the river silted up and the trade moved to Antwerp. It spent four centuries too poor to knock anything down. By the time money came back, the fashion was for preserving rather than replacing — and two world wars passed it by without serious damage.

The result is a medieval city centre that is genuinely medieval, not a reconstruction. That is rarer than it sounds, and it is the reason the whole centre is UNESCO-listed.

Why we drive it

There is a train, and it takes the best part of four hours with two changes. By the time you have done that twice in a day, you have spent eight hours travelling and arrived tired.

We collect you from your door at half past seven, and you are walking into the Markt by half past ten. On the way back you sleep in the van instead of standing on a platform at Antwerp Central.

Your driver stays with the vehicle and with you all day. Shopping bags, coats and anything you buy go in the van rather than round your neck. If it rains, which in Belgium it does, you are ten minutes from a warm car rather than committed to whatever the weather does next.

Adding Ghent — €100, not a second tour

Almost everyone driving from Amsterdam to Bruges passes Ghent on the motorway without stopping. That is the whole reason adding it is cheap: it is already on the road.

Ghent is a different proposition to Bruges. It is Belgium’s second largest city, it has around seventy thousand students, and the centre is full of people who live there. The cafés are aimed at them, not at coach parties, and you feel it in the prices and the cooking.

• The Graslei and Korenlei — two quays facing each other across the old harbour, lined with guild houses going back to the twelfth century.
• Gravensteen — a proper moated stone castle sitting in the middle of the shopping streets. You can walk the walls.
• The Ghent Altarpiece in St Bavo’s Cathedral, painted by the Van Eyck brothers in 1432. It has been stolen, singed, hidden in a salt mine by the Nazis, and one panel has been missing since 1934 and never found.

Doing both means roughly two to three hours in each rather than a full day in one. Some people would rather see two cities; some would rather know one. We will tell you honestly which suits what you have described.

Kinderdijk on the way — nineteen windmills, no extra charge

The road to Bruges passes within ten minutes of Kinderdijk, where nineteen windmills stand in a line along the canals. They were built around 1740 to pump the polder dry, they still can, and together they are the reason the place is on the UNESCO list.

It is the windmill picture most people have in their head, and it is genuinely on the way. If you want it, say so when you book: we leave half an hour earlier and spend about an hour and a quarter walking the dike and going inside one of the mills. There is nothing to pay us for the detour — only the mill entrance, if you go in.

A long day, and we will say so

This is the longest trip we run. Twelve hours door to door, six of them driving, and more if you add Ghent. It is completely worth it if you want to see Bruges, and it is the wrong choice if you have small children who do not travel well, or if you only have energy for a half day.

We would rather tell you that now than have you find out at eight in the evening on the A16.