Thx for advice - new Amsterdam to London plan

Skip Haarlem and go to Bruges and Ghent.

Month and year of trip? This is very important.

The trip you describe is frequently made in one day, but it sounds like you want to stop and explore along the way. That's fine, but I would note that Amsterdam is an excellent city for same-day, unreserved train trips to several popular cities, roughly from Den Haag to Amersfoort. Note that this includes Leiden and Utrecht, two cites that cannot be fully seen in one day. (I much prefer not to change hotel rooms, but you may feel differently.)

Do you understand that (highly desirable) Bruges is a spur journey for anyone going anywhere? There are five trains an hour from Brussels, it's not hard to get to. But it can be VERY crowded to visit, especially in high season, which is most of the year!

Please consider using the Search box top center, because this part of Belgium is discussed almost every week on this newsboard. During much of the summer, 2024, the Eurostar from Amsterdam to London will, temporarily, require a change in Brussels. Or that trip can be purchased as Brussels-London if you do visit Belgium for a while. Eurostar is priced exactly like air tickets, with business-desired departures costing more, advance purchases costing less, and (depending on the rules for each fare) sometimes no change in train selected without buying a new ticket.

Note that most summertime Eurostar departures to or from London require (absolutely REQUIRE) 90-minute advance check-in for UK immigration and paperwork, BEFORE the train leaves. It can be 60 minutes in the off-season, but their website will have the current requirement. Note that I did not write "recommendation."

You can bypass Antwerp and Brussels, but I'm not sure why you would.

You train from Rotterdam to Vlissingen then ferry Vlissingen to Breskens and bus Breskens to Bruges- that bus (as it starts in the Netherlands) is covered by your OV card or other methods of paying for transportation in the Netherlands.

Likewise you don't have to route via Brussels for Eurostar.

You can either go from Bruges to Lille on regional trains via Kortrijk (and join Eurostar at Lille), or train to Ostend, then the Kusttram (Coastal Tram) to De Panne, then the frequent free bus to Dunkirk then train to Lille for Eurostar. Some Dunkirk trains go to Lille Flandres and some to Lille Europe.
That certainly isn't the fastest way, but is the most interesting. The same goes for the Vlissingen route from Rotterdam to Bruges- not the fastest but interesting.

I think that Haarlem is a wonderful town to visit, and stay in. I prefer to stay there and visit Amsterdam rather than the reverse.

If you have a chance to hear the organ in the church on the main square it has a magnificent organ, played on by J S Bach.

Antwerp and Brussels I didn’t mean physically bypass. Just would be more interested in smaller cities or towns along the way or side trips. History, architecture, food, cheese? And if Belgium beer and chocolate.

Antwerp may be one of my favorite cities in Belgium. It has great restaurants, beautiful architecture and of course beer and chocolate too. I very much like Brussels too, so I too wonder why you would want to avoid these cities.

It would help to know when you want to take this trip. This summer? Next fall? Next year? The answers to your questions largely depend upon when you plan to be here.

Thanks for all your tips. Thinking September.
Trying to go linear. Amsterdam then ? Haarlem or Leiden or Delft?? Gouda for cheese making visit? Then Rotterdam or Antwerp or just pass through and go to Ghent. And then Lille to catch Eurostar?

Thanks for helping us figure it out.

Most of the places in Belgium you describe are closer to the Brussels-Midi/Zuid Eurostar terminal than they are to Lille, France. Many posters on this board just want to see Grand Place in Brussels, which is near Brussels Centraal station, but that's up to you.

I'm exaggerating, but there are no small towns in Belgium. There are quite a few lovely but tiny historic centers, now surrounded by banal reinforced concrete or masonry low-rise postwar and contemporary small cities. Those cities are surrounded by prosperous suburbs, with single-family homes, a few of which may have faux-thatched roofs. Note that I'm not slamming Belgium, I like it. But you may have the wrong idea of what you're going to see. There are charming smaller cities, like Lier and Turnhout, that are nice half-days out from Antwerp, but they are still cities, not villages that the G.I.s just moved on from. Amersfoort, NL falls into that category too, but it's not as rewarding for pass-through tourism as larger places like Delft or Leiden.

I don't think I've been to Gouda, but I have been to Alkmaar for similar cheese-tourism. It's a lovely, polished simulacrum of a medieval cheese town. One of the reasons I asked for Month of Year is to remind you that Anne Frank house MUST be purchased in advance, and you have to "play" the ticket release dates to get the day you want. The other issue is, perhaps, tulips. You have asked for advice, but you seem to be resisting it.

Amsterdam, Leiden, Antwerp, Utrecht, have the most museums, all of them nice. Rotterdam has good access to Kinderdijk, but a lot of Modern architecture. Antwerp is particularly (in Belgium) suitable for "neighborhoods, long walks, food markets". It's actually good for 3 days. You can use the Search box top center to read hundreds of reports on Bruges. Technically, Bruges is not "on the way" to Amsterdam, but that does not reduce the number of visitors it hosts daily.

faux-thatched roofs.

OK, I'll bite. What is a faux-thatched roof and how can you tell it? I live near quite a number or faux-thatched roofs.

EDIT - of real thatched roofs.

well, I've been to Stowmarket (East Anglia), for example, so I have seen thatched roofs that have been repaired or replaced for generations, going back to "[Oliver] Cromwell House", one of the homes I saw. But it seems to me that if a developer built the home after World War II, whether the roof sheds water or not, it could be considered "faux". I've seen a few on the bus from Antwerp to Turnhout, in clusters, like any "development". There are plenty of "faux Fachwerke" homes built in Germany, up to today.

I think all thatched roofs today have to have "rip-away" ties for their "invisible [bird] netting", so the fire department can get at the roof quickly, if necessary. I suppose the key question about thatching is whether it's built up artisanally/traditionally, or pre-fabbed in some way, to make it more affordable to the developer?

Friends of mine just finished the restoration, rebuilding is more like it actually, of an old farm house. One of the many improvements they did was replace the roof tiles by a thatched roof. They spend tens of thousands of euros on buying the right reed and the skilled craftsmen to do the roof. But it seems their house is only faux-thatched?
I live in the border region of the Netherlands and Belgium and until now I didn’t think of the many beautiful houses with a thatched roof that can be found here, as faux-thatched. The houses have real reed on them and the craftsman who make these roofs are highly skilled craftsmen, who not seldom have learned their craft from older generations. There isn’t anything prefabbed about it.

To get back to the OP’s question. I can’t help but think you overestimate the size of the cities here. The only city that might give you a “big city feel” is Rotterdam. This is because Rotterdam was bombed heavily during WW2 and therefore has a lot of new buildings. The nickname of Rotterdam is “Manhattan aan de Maas” which translates as Manhattan along the (river) Maas”. Rotterdam has a lot of skyscrapers and they’re building even more.
All other cities mentioned here, Amsterdam, Haarlem, Antwerp, Ghent, Bruges are small compared to American cities. Even Brussels can be considered small if you stay in the historical city center and don’t venture in the European Quarter with all the EU buildings.

Another important thing to add as I only just noticed that you plan to do this in September. From September 13 until September 16 the IBC convention takes place in Amsterdam. As several other posters on this forum have already found out, hotel prices in Amsterdam absolutely skyrocket during that period and the days right before and after. And by skyrocket, I mean triple or quadruple the normal price, which in Amsterdam is already pretty high to begin with.
If you want to stay in Amsterdam it’s best to avoid these dates altogether.