Bruges: 3 Days, Plus Ghent
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Three days is our 2-day core with a genuine day trip added instead of forced in around it: Ghent gets its own undivided day rather than a rushed half-day squeezed between Bruges sights.
Day-by-day at a glance
| Day | Focus | Roughly |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Belfry, Burg, canal boat, Church of Our Lady | Timed Belfry slot |
| 2 | Groeningemuseum, Begijnhof, De Halve Maan brewery | Museum + brewery tickets |
| 3 | Ghent day trip | 25-30 min each way by train |
Book these before you go
- A timed Belfry climb slot for summer, the walk-up queue gets long fast.
- Check current Bruges hotel and B&B rates : stay inside the ring canal, it’s the whole point of an overnight.
- A De Halve Maan brewery tour slot for a guaranteed time rather than a walk-up.
Day 1: The Markt, the Burg and the canals
Morning: The Belfry first, about 83 meters tall, 366 steps, no lift, a 47-bell carillon at the top. Go before the coach groups. The Burg square next door holds the Gothic Stadhuis (begun 1376) and the Basilica of the Holy Blood.
Afternoon: A canal boat from one of the central jetties, paid on the day rather than booked online, roughly half an hour. Then the Church of Our Lady, its 115.6-meter brick tower the third-tallest of its kind anywhere, and Michelangelo’s Madonna and Child inside, the only Michelangelo sculpture known to have left Italy in his lifetime.
Evening: Stoofvlees, beef braised in beer, then a slow canal walk once the day-trip crowds have thinned.
Concrete tip: do the Belfry and the canal boat before 10am, both get materially worse once the day gets going.
Day 2: Museums, the Begijnhof and beer
Morning: The Groeningemuseum, a compact but serious Flemish Primitives collection, Jan van Eyck, Hieronymus Bosch’s Last Judgement, Memling, Gerard David. A genuine hour, not a rushed twenty minutes.
Midday: The Begijnhof, a walled former beguine community now home to Benedictine nuns, part of the separate 1998 “Flemish Béguinages” UNESCO listing. Keep it quiet. Minnewater, the Lake of Love, sits right beside it.
Afternoon: De Halve Maan brewery tour on Walplein, running since 1856, home to Brugse Zot and Straffe Hendrik, and the roughly 3km underground pipeline it opened in 2016 to move beer without trucks on the medieval cobbles.
Evening: A relaxed dinner, save the bigger legs for tomorrow’s day trip.
Concrete tip: buy your canal boat ticket at the jetty, not online, and go before the queue builds past a short wait.
Day 3: Ghent
Take the train to Ghent, commonly cited at 25-30 minutes each way on the same rail corridor Bruges shares with Brussels, one of the shortest and best-value day trips from the city. Ghent is a genuine art city in its own right rather than a smaller copy of Bruges: St Bavo’s Cathedral holds the Ghent Altarpiece, Gravensteen castle is walkable room by room, and the Graslei and Korenlei quaysides give Ghent its own version of a photogenic waterfront. Have lunch in Ghent rather than saving it for the return, the city has a strong, distinct food scene of its own. Head back to Bruges by early evening for a final quiet canal walk.
Concrete tip: don’t try to add Bruges sightseeing on top of a Ghent day trip, the round-trip and a proper look at Ghent already fill the day comfortably.
Getting here: Bruges has no useful airport of its own, arrive via Brussels Airport (the airport-to-Bruxelles-Centraal leg alone runs around €11.60 second class) or Eurostar into Brussels followed by about an hour on to Bruges. Brugge station is a 15-20 minute walk south of the Markt. Want more day trips instead of just Ghent? Our 5-day itinerary adds Ypres and the coast on top of this same core.