My husband and I are planning 7 nights in Netherlands and Belgium in August and I wanted to see if our itinerary is too ambitious. We have a round trip flight to Amsterdam, and our plan is to spend 3 nights in Amsterdam, then a lazy travel day to Bruges, maybe stopping in Antwerp for a few hours on the way. So nights 4 and 5 in Bruges, then night 6 in Ghent and finally night 7 closer to the airport - maybe Leiden?, before flying home the next day. I have travelled a lot in Europe (spent a year of university in Barcelona) but have never been to either country. We tend to like to walk around, sit in cafes/restaurants and see the sights, but we're not huge museum or ticketed attraction people. I usually hate to only have one night in a place but want to see both Bruges and Ghent without being too far away from Schiphol on our final night. Thoughts?
Also, I've been looking through the Netherlands train site and my question is whether we need to buy tickets in advance. For example on our day from Amsterdam to Bruges, we won't have an agenda and don't necessarily want to be tied to a specific train schedule but on the other hand don't want all the trains to be booked. Thanks!