Bus between Amsterdam and Bruges

First, Rail Europe is a travel agency - not a train company - that doesn't always list all the trains available and not always at the cheapest price but they do provide good service. You can easily book a train straight to Brugge via the site for the national train. The short time between trains is not a problem as most train run pretty to time. With short transfers often it is a matter of walking across the platform or sometimes just stand there as your old pulls out and new one comes in behind it.

However, Antwerp is a very nice station right on a plaza and it worth spending an extra hour in Antwerp for a quick stroll into the plaza. Nice ice cream shop off to the left of the plaza.

Thanks for your quick reply. If rail europe isn't a good site to book a trip on, can you
gve me the name of a better site?

this for the train
https://www.nsinternational.nl/en

or you can take the bus Eurolines for as little as 18 euros one way
http://www.eurolines.nl/en/

I trust you know that Amsterdam and Brugge are in different countries. And Brugge is easy to get to from Antwerp, harder to get to from Amsterdam. Each country had a national rail agency that sells both national and international tickets. The Belgian company is NMBS and the Dutch company is http://www.ns.nl/en. Please use our host's ( top left of Desktop site) to get free general advice on rail travel.

To see the schedule www.bahn.com. Since it is the German National Railway, they can't sell tickets for trains outside of Germany.

For the fast Thalys train, https://www.thalys.com/de/en/
You can buy an advance ticket and specify "any Belgian station" and the ticket will include the connecting train to Brugge. Thalys tickets are like airline tickets, buy in advance and commit to a specific train for a good price. Or pay full fare for a lot more money and travel whenever you want. Thalys trains have seat reservations, connecting trains do not and you can travel on any train that day.

Don’t worry too much about transfer times between trains. Coming from Amsterdam with the Thalys you have to change in Antwerp and if you miss your intercity train to Ghent you can take the next one not so much later (trains run very frequent between major places). Your ticket for the intercity part of the trip is valuable for the whole day.

Travelling back just take an earlier train from Bruges (with that Ghent also) if you want to be sure as the seat in the Thalys in Antwerp will be reserved for that particular time so if you miss that one you have to buy a new expect very expensive ticket for the next Thalys if you want that. But instead you can opt for continuing there with the intercity for the final leg to Amsterdam, you can buy the tickets at the counter.

A bus is cheaper but as I see on the Eurolines website it will be a very time consuming affair and the buses stop far from the city centres so you have to add time to get there too. So total travelling time will be well over 12 (boring) hours just for an onvernight stay in Bruges. With a highspeed train you can do that for half the time and if you book early you can buy tickets for competitive prices compared to the intercity trains.

Thanks to everyone for your advice! I appreciate your help!

If rail europe isn't a good site to book a trip on, can you give me the name of a better site? >>

SNCB Europe (https://www.b-europe.com/EN) allows you to book, pay online and print your tickets at home before you leave for your trip. You can take advantage of the lower prices for purchasing in advance and have your bar coded tickets in hand for itineraries involving all the major high speed trains. I use it for all my trips to Western Europe.