Planning a 15 nights in Belgium, Luxemburg, and the Netherlands

It will help elicit comments if you indicate your mode of travel and range of interests: Train, car, other transport. Someone interested in WW2 sites may or may not be concerned with the local breweries. Art museums/sports. And so on. One point to make: The distances between these countries are small and choices of transport fairly dense.

There has been a lot of info posted here recently. Either do a Search, or just read the threads under each country.
We are going next spring.
Have a great trip!

A few years back we did a version of what you mention. We started in Amsterdam, and after 5 days, we took the train to Antwerp, Bruges and Ghent. We stayed in each for 3-4 days which included a day trip to Brussels from Ghent and a WW1 Flanders tour from Bruges. After Belgium we took the train to Paris and finished with a week there. The focus for us was Amsterdam and Belgium. Next year we hope to return to the Netherlands and we will stay in 3-4 other cities/towns to explore. It helps that the distances by train are short so seeing a number of places is very manageable.

We did a Benelux tour as part of a longer 3 week spring trip quite a few years ago. It actually started in France as, like Claire, we were visiting quite a few WWI and WWII battle sites and memorials. It morphed into a more general site seeing tour towards the end in Belgium and the Netherlands.

IIRC, we only spent a couple of nights in Luxembourg city. We skipped Brussels altogether, spending more time in the Passchendaele area, Ghent, and Bruges. Then on to Delft, and Haarlem. Because we were driving, we didn't stay in Amsterdam, choosing to day trip from Haarlem (we also saw the Keukenhof gardens). Aside from Haarlem, we only spent a couple of nights in each place. We stayed in Haarlem for 4 or 5. And before anyone asks, we drove because we were living in Europe and had our own car. And it was easier to visit all the battlefields by car. Otherwise we would have been happy to just use trains.

In July 2019, I took a solo trip. I spent 5 nights in Amsterdam, 3 nights in The Hague, 3 in Antwerp, 2 in Brussels. I didn't make time for Bruges. In Brussels, only made time for the art museum and briefly various streets and streets. Antwerp has some good museums. I like art museums. My favorite paintings are old Dutch paintings. Maybe for irrational reasons. Maybe influenced by the old Dutch paintings at the Detroit Institute of Art.

Make a tentative day-by-day detailed itinerary. Write some places you definitely want to see and also have two or more choices on one or more days and then ask your daughter for her input for which of the choices she likes best for the not definite-yet times.

Edit: I didn't rent a car. There is too much trains and public transportation connecting the places I picked, to justify renting a car.

I am fairly far along in planning a trip to the Netherlands and Belgium this October. In additions to the RS books, I picked up slightly dated (2019) Rough Guide kindle books on Netherlands and one on Belgium & Luxemburg for only $2.99 each on amazon. These cover more cities and towns, and more sites, than the RS books and have been very useful in planning.

The distances between these countries may be small but the train ride from Brussels to Luxembourg City still takes about 3 hours. It is a really slow trip which calls at all the little stations, so you might think of a car for the Luxembourg portion. Also in the Ardennes and for any WWII sites associated with the Battle of the Bulge, a car is useful (same corner). But for the rest you neither need nor want a car. Several cities in Belgium have an LEZ (low-emissions zone) and you have to register your car if you want to bring it in, and the train network is dense just about everywhere except for the Ardennes.

In Luxembourg itself all public transport is free (and very efficient).

Lavandula