How easy or not is a car in Antwerp and Bruges?

Antwerp has a Low Emission Zone or LEZ for which you need to register your car. Failure to do so will result in an automatic fine of €150 which National will only be to happy to charge to you. Plus a fee for their trouble of course.
For more details and to register your car;
https://www.slimnaarantwerpen.be/en/lez

On top of that the roads in and around Antwerp are undergoing major roadworks, reconstruction etc. I live in the Netherlands close to the border with Belgium and I visit Antwerp quite frequently. The last few years never by car though. These days it’s an absolute nightmare to get in and out of the city by car due to all the roadworks.

If it is just for visiting Bruges and Antwerp and the costs of the train are about the same as with a car I would take the train. The train station in Bruges is at walking distance of the historic center and in Antwerp you can walk or take the tram for this.

With the train no worry about traffic jams, btw where as already said Antwerp is notorious for and finding a parking. The train is anyway faster as you don’t loose time driving through the outskirts of both places looking for a place to park the car. But if you anyway feel more comfortable using a car you are ofcourse free doing that.

Thanks! Nothing like local knowledge.

Sweet deal for the car, but you have fuel, parking is a significant cost. Someplace like Antwerp, due to the low emission zone, you would need to find a town outside Antwerp and take the train in, so added cost.

I'm not clear on how many days you are talking about, is it 3-4 days? or 11-12 days? The longer of the two might allow you to plan something out with a car, stay someplace outside of Antwerp, daytrip in, stay in Bruges, work your way to Frankfurt, maybe stay in a smaller town along the Rhine or Mosel rivers..

Gent, where a lot of folks who visit Bruges also go, also has the same registration requirement, and parking there can also be interesting.

In Bruges don't try to park on the street unless you have a really good understanding of blue/white and then take a really big dose of patience - and a big wallet.

Who am I to say because I didn’t drive when I visited these places this past March? That said, my advice would be NOT to drive to these places. Why park a car for days? Ditch the car and use trains. Leave the headache of navigating around in an unfamiliar place and trying to follow laws that you don’t know behind.

Either way, enjoy!

Antwerp is loaded with narrow streets and strange one-way assignments, as well as plenty of traffic. That said, it is a large city, which requires public transportation to see well. I might add that the pay-parking garages have much smaller stalls and ramps than garages in the US. For example, it is common for passengers to have to get out before the driver backs into the stall.

I personally might visit places like Cologne, Aachen, Munster, Kassel, Monschau, Quedlinburg, etc., instead of sitting in plodding traffic in my exciting BMW 700 series ...