Hi-
Six or my co-workers and I are traveling to Belgium in 2 weeks for a weeks stay in Knokke (taking day trips) then to Paris for 3 days. Any help with our itienery or suggestions would be great!!
Arrive Friday : Stick around Knokke - recover from flight
Sat. %26amp; Sun.: Go to Brugge, maybe a boat tour, bewery, sightsee. May also go to other coastal towns around Knokke, Dam, O.
Monday: Go to Antwerp, see diamond captial of the world, ???
Tuesday : Ghent, see/tour a castle, walking tour, boat tour, ???
Wednesday: Brussels, main square, Battlefield (Waterloo or Battle of the Bulge)
Thurs: ?????
Friday: Leave for Paris
Any suggestions of things to do would be great. We are stay in Knokke, so things must be a reasonable time from there, are there any battlefields that you are able to get to by train - we won%26#39;t have a car. Any recommendation on castles to see or tours.
Thanks
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Just 2 comments:
1) The main centre for battlefields (WWI) is Ieper (Ypres), if you want to actually visit these you would have to take one of the tours run by the local tourist office, otherwise you can easily spend your time in the town visiting the Menin Gate and the wonderful museum, In Flanders Fields. The quickest way from Knokke to Ieper by train (2h15) involves changing twice, at Brugge and Kortrijk, but leaving at 09:05 you arrive at 11:20 so this is fine just to visit the town.
2) On the other hand, you cannot really do Brussels AND Waterloo, let alone the Battle of the Bulge area - on the way to Luxembourg - on the same day (especially when you are coming in from and returning to Knokke - it can take 5 hrs from Knokke to Bastogne!), and the latter area is hard to visit by train, apart from Bastogne itself.
While there is a train to Waterloo station, the battlefield is not there but at Mont St. Jean, you will have a 10-minute walk or so from the station to the main street of Waterloo, arriving by the church which is also next to the tourist office. I would stop here (I think you can get some sort of combined ticket deal from the tourist office) and visit the Wellington Museum across the street, especially the bit at the very end where there is an almost hour-by-hour reconstruction of action on the battlefield; without this it%26#39;s very hard to understand what you are seeing when you get to Mont St. Jean (where there is very little other than the Lion Mount, the %26quot;panorama%26quot; and a lot of Napoleon souvenirs). This you would do by bus W from in front of the Waterloo tourist office (which actually starts from Gare du Midi in Brussels, in Avenue Fonsny in front of the Hotel Ibis Gare du Midi).
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Hello,
I think Damme would make a nice extra for your visit to Brugge. It is tiny and very close to Brugge.
Antwerp is a bustling culture city with many Renaissance buildings, and has much more to offer than just diamonds: the Rubenshuis, Vleeshuis, a walk along the river Schelde, trendy bars and restaurants: a good idea for a (long) daytrip.
In Ghent I would definitely recommend that you%26#39;d visit the Castle of the Counts (Gravensteen) and stroll through the medieval city center with lots of canals. Since you%26#39;re a group of seven travelers, you could perhaps book a historical or gastronomy tour with Vizit (www.vizit.be) for the really %26#39;light%26#39; and sometimes juicy stories or with the Gidsenbond (gidsenbond-gent.be/website/engels/index.html) or Gandante (www.gandante.be) for the more serious ones (not too heavy, very interesting as well).
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