Sharon_Ben

Ater 4 days of business in Belgium we will spend the 1st Fri. of Dec in Ostend & the last night (2nd Fri) in Brussels to be close to the airport. We want to create a travel agenda. We will have a car and thought we would concentrate on Belgium & Amsterdam. Any suggestions of what to do, where to stay, eat, etc?
Thanks, Ben & Sharon

Janine

From my understanding of your post, you have a week (Fri-Fri)?, which is not a great deal of time. I guess it depends largely on your interests. But I will start you off by saying definitely include Bruges (Brugge) in your itinerary. It's a beautifully preserved medieval town, which was last year's European City of Culture (along with Salamanca, Spain).

Tulips

Do you want to visit just cities, or countryside as well? If you have 7 days, and visit Brugge, Brussels, Amsterdam, and maybe Antwerp, your week will be quite full already. By the way, 5th/6th December is Sinterklaas in Belgium and The Netherlands; this is when children traditionally get their presents. You will see Sinterklaas decorations in all the shops. In Holland, Santa is banned until after December 6.

jenviolin

If you are energetic and want to see a lot, try this:

2 nights in the Belgian Ardennes (near Durbuy OR 1 in Boullion and 1 near Durbuy

1 night in Maastricht

1 night near the Hoge Veluwe (near Arnhem; try Otterloo); go to the National Park and the Kroeller-Mueller art museum

2 nights in Amsterdam

1 night in Delft (stop in The Hague to see the Mauritshuis museum on the way)

Back to Brussels.

Alternatively you could skip the Hoge Veluwe and add another night in Amsterdam, or another night in Delft to enable you to see Rotterdam.

Keep in mind that there is not a lot of daylight at this time of year. It's light from about 8 am - 4:30 pm.

Tulips

If you go to the Veluwe area I can recommend the Bilderberg hotel group; they have several hotels there. We stayed at the Klein Zwitserland hotel recently, and really enjoyed our stay. It has an indoor pool too. www.bilderberg.nl