I’ve been to different countries in Europe utilizing public transport which worked well for me. I’m planning a trip with two relatives to Brugges, Amsterdam, and neighboring cities (big cities as well as smaller ones) in Fall 2021. Shall we rent a car or use public transportation or both?
Thanks in advance.
Use public transportation. The train network in the Benelux is good with frequent departures and easy to use. And if you're focusing on towns and cities you have no need for a car. In fact a car will just be a pain as the towns and cities are built for people and bikes, not for cars. Especially in the Netherlands but Belgium is moving in that direction as well. And outside the built up areas the motorways can be really crowded.
I can tell you from personal experience that driving in Amsterdam and Antwerp is a nightmare of tiny one-way streets with barely one travel lane, heavy traffic, and impossible on-street parking. Daily daytrips by train to nearby cities are a pleasure. Amsterdam and Brugge are not particularly close to each other. In a few cities, the historic core is almost a mile from the train station. Brugge is an example of that.
Edit:
https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/belgium/driving-from-bruges-to
https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/belgium/ghent-altarpiece-parking
https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/belgium/brussels-bruges-antwerp-or-ghent
https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/netherlands/can-we-do-amsterdam-brussels-and-bruges-in-7-days
https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/france/land-at-cdg-driving-to-bruges-looking-for-good-family-place-to-stay-for-a-night
+1 to what is stated above.
Personally I found Dutch cities to be so much easier for pedestrians and cyclists, and the trains were great for city to city.
Another vote for public transport.
Brugge/Bruges is small and walkable
Amsterdam has very good public tranport
Trains in both Belgium and the Netherlands have worked well for me between cities.
I really cannot think of any advantage to hiring a car in either country unless there is a really "out of the way" place you need to visit.
You don''t identify what the other "neighboring cities" are, so it's difficult to give solid advice, but I can give you my two cents. I find, as I suspect you have, too, that most European cities tend to promote the use of public trans and make it difficult to drive and park "downtown." I've been to both Brugges and Amsterdam and there is no need for a car: public transportation is fine. From Brugges you can certainly get to, and enjoy, Brussels and Ghent via public trans. Trains run frequently. All of these cities are pedestrian friendly.
If you plan on going to Ypres, Waterloo and or Antwerp, they are also accessible by train but I'm not familiar with the schedules as I've never been.
I’m generally a rental car person, but we often go to towns and places not served, or regularly served, by public transportation. If you’re staying in cities or places served by regular train or bus service, then stick with public transportation. I dislike driving in large European cities for the reasons others have already stated, plus parking in a parking garage can cost 20-25€ a day.
The only place in Europe we didn’t rent a car was The Netherlands. There are buses at train stations when you arrive. Worked well.
Car rental is for between cities. Within cities, cars are not helpful. Plus they cost a fee per day for both storage and overall rental.
I am generally very pro-public transport. When I do rent a car, I always get 1 or more speeding tickets. There are many discussions on the Forum about "Should I pay the ticket?" and "Why did I get the ticket a year after I returned?" and so forth. You say "trip with two relatives". If one is very young (under 10) or very old with mobility issues, a car might be a good choice. If all members of the party are mobile and active, public transport is probably the best and cheapest choice.
It's really best in such questions to be very clear. General questions like "Should I rent a car?" are too vague. What is your day-to-day plan? Have you looked into transportation options for each step? Perhaps there is a part of your trip which needs more flexibility. But Germany, Netherlands, you can easily get by with public transport. There are parts of Germany, France, whatever, which need more flexibility. Without more detail, it's not really clear if you are in such locations.
There are parts of Germany, France, whatever, which need more flexibility.
I would definitely agree about France, but I'm not so sure about Germany. There are 16 German states (incl. 3 City-states). I've been in 9, 10 if you include parts of Thürigen (on the train only - never set foot), totally by rail and a few buses. I've been able to get everywhere I wanted to go to in Germany by public transport.
As long as you do not want to explore the country side stay on public transport. A car is not helpful in mid-European urban areas.
The biggest problem with the car option is that you have to find a place to park. This is very much a problem in large cities where the cost of parking can be very high.
Brugges is not a large city, but parking is an issue. Do some research on taking the trains for all the cities that you are visiting. Amsterdam is not a great place to find parking.
I'd like to agree about parking in Brugge/Bruges. The entire city inside the ring road is divided into blue and white areas and if you contemplate driving to that beautiful city you must understand which part of the city you will be in. The laws are different in both, and the street parking (ha!! you have to find some first and it could take you a long time, I've spent up to an hour and not near where I wanted) prices and durations vary considerably.
Parking is available at the station (but if you park there like most people do, why not just take the train?), at 't Zand and a carpark at Astrid. Beware if parking in the 't Zand or Astrid the spaces are tight and the entry/exit and corners are also tight.
There are absolutely oodles of extremely frequent buses between the station and the centre of the town.
Trust me when I discourage you from driving into Bruges/Brugge.
Where in Europe is taking the train fast and affordable, and where is it not? The European Data Journalism Network has gathered data on train journeys from 28 booking websites across Europe, collecting more than 8,000 single journey ticket prices and travel times for 73 sample routes.
These six graphs show how affordable and fast trains in Europe are
I think the study linked above suffers from the same problems as Rick's fare maps. For Germany, at least, they assume full walk-up ticket prices, when considerable discounts are available for advance purchase (Spar Preis), slightly slower trains (IC vs ICE), and several people traveling together (Länder-Tickets).
According to the study, the three trips they show, Berlin to Cologne, Munich to Stuttgart, and Cologne to Duisburg total 907 km. The walk-up ticket prices from German Rail add up to 181 euro. That's 20 euro cent per km. But using SparPreis ticket prices, the total fare is 72,70 euro, or 8 euro cent/km. Similarly, a trip I took in 2017, from St Goar to the Ost Allgäu (SparPreis) to Lindau (Regional pass) to Rothenburg (Bayern-Ticket) cost me 138,40 euro for two people, or 8.8 euro cent/km/pers. Walk up tickets for the same trip would have been 21.7 euro cent/km. So the prices in the study are more than twice what one can get taking advantage of discounted fares.
Full fare is only paid by people who don't, or can't, plan ahead, like businessmen traveling at the last minute on the company's dime, but then that comes out of a company's budget, not the median disposable income for a person. It's just like businessmen paying full price for last-minute airline tickets in the US. The study is irrelevant for American tourists planning months in advance, but then it wasn't meant to apply to us.
As one who opts for driving over taking the train when in Europe, I must concur with the others on choosing the train for your trip. I drove into Brugge to stay at the Crown Plaza Brugge. Great place and location to stay by the way. If our rental car did not have such a great GPS I doubt that I would have found our way there. Yes, even with Google or Apple maps on our phones I preferred our cars GPS. I have not been to Amsterdam yet, we cut it from our trip over last year. However, if we had gone to Amsterdam my plan was to park the car outside of town and train in. As others have asked, where else are you going that leads you to believe that you may need a car?
I went to Amsterdam, the Hague, Delft, Antwerp, Brussels, and Ghent, in July 2019. I did not rent a car for any part of my trip. I took the trains between cities. In the cities of of Amsterdam, Brussels, and Antwerp, I walked a lot, and took local public transportation - probably not more than 8 times a day - I wasn't trying to save money, I was (randomly) trying to balance saving time versus walking past monuments or scenery versus not wearing myself out walking excessively. I took the bus from the airport to near my hotel in Amsterdam .
Also I have been to Vilnius, Lithuania for a class; London, 3 cities in Italy, and Greece. I did not rent a car in any of those places. My preference is to avoid renting a car if public transportation will be adequate. I do drive near home in South East Michigan. Perhaps I will acquiesce to renting a car on a future trip if public transportation would be inadequate, but doing so would not be my first choice.
