Belgium

Belgium runs on SNCB/NMBS rail, dense and frequent, and the country is small enough that the whole tourist core — Bruges, Ghent, Brussels, Antwerp — sits within about 90 minutes end to end, with dozens of trains a day on the main links. You can base in one city and day-trip the rest, or string them together, without ever needing a car. The two airports are Brussels (BRU) and the Ryanair base at Charleroi (CRL); a car only really helps for the Ardennes.

Because every city is about an hour apart by train, the efficient move is to pick one base and day-trip the rest rather than change hotels four times — Ghent is central, lively and cheaper than Bruges, and makes a strong single base. And since Brussels-Midi is the Eurostar hub (Paris, Amsterdam, Cologne and London all 1–2 hours away), Belgium slots neatly onto a wider rail trip rather than needing its own flights.

There’s no reliable summer here, so the best windows are spring (April–May) — mild, with the Ghent Floralies and bulb season — and early autumn (September), before the wet deepens. The other reason to come is late November to late December, when the Christmas markets fill the squares of Bruges, Brussels, Ghent and Antwerp with mulled wine and lights.

The summer calendar is studded with world-famous festivals: the Carnival of Binche (a UNESCO-listed Mardi Gras tradition), the ten-day Ghent Festival in July, and Tomorrowland, the global EDM festival at Boom over the last two weekends of July. Any of them is a reason to time a visit.

• Bruges is a day-tripper crushSkipthe centre at midday, when the coach tours peakGoan early start or an overnight — or Ghent, just as pretty and more lived-in
• the weather is grey and wet (often)Skippinning the trip on sunshineGothe indoor riches — museums, chocolatiers, beer cafés — and the winter Christmas markets
• you want countryside, not citiesSkipassuming Belgium is all medieval townsGothe forested Ardennes in Wallonia — castles, Dinant, Bastogne, a different, French-speaking country

Bruges’ medieval centre is a UNESCO site, its canals and gabled streets largely intact — free to wander, with canal-boat tours a few euros and an 83-metre belfry to climb. Ghent holds Van Eyck’s Adoration of the Mystic Lamb in St Bavo’s Cathedral (book ahead; the upper panels are off-site under restoration until about spring 2027). Brussels centres on the UNESCO Grand-Place and the Expo-58 Atomium, with Horta’s Art Nouveau townhouses and the Magritte Museum; Antwerp adds Rubens, diamonds, fashion and its cathedral-like station.

The other, quieter pilgrimage is to the WWI battlefields of Flanders around Ypres (Ieper), where the Last Post has sounded under the Menin Gate every night since 1928 (see the figure). And across the whole country, beer culture is UNESCO-listed, with some 1,500 beers to work through.

The classic trip is the Flemish city circuit — Brussels, Bruges, Ghent and Antwerp, strung together on short train rides — with a day out to the Flanders Fields battlefields from Ghent or Bruges. The Ardennes in French-speaking Wallonia are the other Belgium: forested hills, castles, Adolphe Sax’s Dinant on the Meuse, and the Battle-of-the-Bulge history at Bastogne. The two halves feel genuinely different — and the language flips with them.

For a small country Belgium’s food and drink are a genuine headline act. The beer is the crown — some 1,500 of them, the five Trappist monastery ales, the sour Brussels-valley lambics, each poured into its own glass — and the culture around it is UNESCO-listed. The chocolate is the other: the filled praline was invented in Brussels by Neuhaus in 1912, and the chocolatiers are everywhere.

The everyday pleasures are just as good: frites from a frituur (Belgium claims to have invented the chip, and eats it with mayonnaise from a paper cone), waffles (the dense sugary Liège from a street cart, the lighter Brussels on a plate), and the national plate of moules-frites. It’s a country where you can eat and drink superbly for not very much.

The defining fact of Belgium is its language border: Dutch-speaking Flanders in the north, French-speaking Wallonia in the south, a small German-speaking east, and officially bilingual Brussels in the middle. It’s a real fault line — signage, greetings and even political parties switch across it — and the tactful move is to open in English rather than guess wrong. The federal complexity is legendary: Belgium once spent a world-record 541 days without a full government and shrugged.

The culture it produces is wry and inventive. This is the country of comics — Hergé’s Tintin and Peyo’s Smurfs were both born here — and of surrealism, in Magritte’s bowler hats and that-is-not-a-pipe. It’s also cosmopolitan and liberal: Brussels is the EU’s capital.

Belgium is one of the world’s most progressive countries on LGBTQ+ rights — it was the second country in the world to legalise same-sex marriage, in 2003, after the Netherlands — and Antwerp and Brussels are notably gay-friendly.

Belgium is a Schengen and eurozone country, so visa-exempt visitors breeze in for 90 days in any 180, no visa. The EU’s biometric Entry/Exit System is now fully deployed — expect a fingerprint-and-photo registration on arrival, with kiosks and e-gates built out at Brussels Airport and Brussels-Midi — while the separate ETIAS authorisation is not yet required, and is expected to phase in during 2027 at a €20 fee. VAT is 21%.

Belgium is card- and contactless-friendly (less cash-dependent than neighbouring Germany), tap water is safe, and it’s far more relaxed about Sunday opening than much of the Continent, with many city-centre shops trading. Tipping isn’t expected beyond rounding up — service is included. It’s a safe country (the US rates it Level 2, the European norm); the main nuisance is pickpocketing around Brussels stations, so keep the usual city caution. The emergency number is 112.

A small etiquette note that delights locals: the chips are Belgian (or at least fiercely contested with France), and you eat them from a paper cone at a frituur with a dab of mayonnaise, not ketchup. And order a beer by name — each comes in its own branded glass, and asking simply for "a beer" marks you out at once.