travelerwife

We will be finishing a river cruise in Amsterdam in April, and want to extend our trip another week. Since we've been to the Netherlands before, we thought we'd head to Belgium, visiting Bruges and Antwerp. But I'm intrigued by the thought of getting out of the towns into more natural scenery and so would love some feedback on visiting the Ardennes. Best way to get around? Must-see suggestions? Amount of time recommended?

Whathello

Worth going ? Definitely.

What ate you into ?
Scenery : I love the vallée de la Molignee start at namur and stop to see the ruins of Montaigne.
Namur is nice - see the citadel.
Dinant is a beautiful small town and Ardennes start there.

Whathello

Bouillon is a superbly preserved medieval castle.
You have great caves at Han sur Lesse.
A zoo too.
Butchenbach is bucolic - more towards liege.
Arlon is worth a quick stop and Bastogne id full of history if WW2.
And walking around is great - we had lately superb walks around Spa for example.

ribeirasacra

Best way? That for me is using my car.
http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/2012...dennes-belgium
https://www.thecrazytourist.com/15-b...ennes-belgium/

lavandula

The Ardennes is a good counterpoint to the flat landscape of Flanders. Most of the posts above mention much of what is good to see; rolling forested hills that are really only accessible by car.

La Roche-en-Ardenne is a nice town there. There used to be a shop there selling hand-carved walking sticks (hiking is a big pastime in the area), and a castle you can walk up to.

Near beautiful Dinant is kayaking, from Houyet to Anseremme. On the way down the river you will pass the amazing castle of Freÿr, worth a trip back with the car.

If you didn't stop anywhere for very long you could do a circuit of 2 - 3 towns in a day, but you will probably want to get out of the car and look at the caves, visit the castles, etc, so maybe 3 days conservatively. You could spend a lot longer. Watch out with the caves: they sound an explosion when the tour group gets to the end of the caves, I assume to demonstrate the echo. Loud!!!

Lavandula

Whathello

I am not sure about the explosion these days Lavandula.
It was done when you left on a small barge and the barge had been forbidden to use for safety reasons. You now exit on foot and I don't know if they still fire the small gun.
There is also the trainees 3 vallées for those who like trains. An old steam train runs for something like one hour and you can visit a museum about ... trains. We ran the old Micheline in that day.

lavandula

Oh thank goodness, the caves were good but the explosion not so much! I don't remember the barge at all though. This is going back some years so no surprise there.

Lavandula

Whathello

The grottes de remouchamps are nice too and my daughters reminded me that the fries from the brasserie next to it were fabulous ;-)

Then there is Durbuy. Visited mostly by Chinese. Durbuy had the good sense to communicate on being the smallest city in Europe. A nice one too and they have this great natural labyrinth that I say each year I'll visit.