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Into Amsterdam, out of Paris and Belgium, maybe France in between - how to do

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We plan to fly into Amsterdam next August to visit friends - then we want to go to Belgium (Bruges including Ypres and Atlantikwall on the coast, Ghent, Waterloo and Bastogne). I would love to stop in Colmar, France for a few days before returning home, but I know it may not work out. In any case, the plan is to fly home from Paris (trying to stick with airport that fly direct to NYC).

I can not figure out how to do this in an efficient way between trains and renting cars, because for example, it makes sense to take trains between Bruges, Ghent, and Brussels, but then Bastogne is rural and easier to drive to.

If Bastogne is just too much of a headache to work into the itinerary we can replace it with another WW II site, but no matter what, I think a WW II site requires some out of the way driving (ie Ettelbruck or Diekirch in Luxembourg, Fort Schoenenbourg in Alsace)

Should I change up the order? I'm usually good at mapping out itineraries, but I'm having trouble with this one.

Thanks in advance.

Posted by
79 posts

Ideas for not renting a car. You could do a WWI tour from Bruges, the Rick Steve’s guidebook has a lot of info on this. There’s also a private tour to Dunkirk from Bruges that we took. From Brussels, you can join a tour or take a train and bus to Waterloo.

Posted by
39 posts

How many days do you have on the ground? If you had a car from Brussels you could drop it at CDG. I know, I know, drop off fees ... but Paris CDG - Brussels is a common pathway for rental cars and you might do the rental car company a favour and bring back a French car. That happened to us once, we were very lucky. You need to do a mock booking with the company and see what the result is. I think from memory that one time was Hertz ...?

Then you could do train from Amsterdam / places in the Netherlands to Bruges (including Ypres, perhaps a guided tour for this) and the Atlantikwall (coastal tram here), Ghent and then Brussels. Then a car to Waterloo, Bastogne and anywhere else in Luxembourg, then Colmar and CDG.

The only sticking point might be how many days you have - plot it out by nights. You can do it if you have enough time!
Lavandula

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