Home Base in Belgium

I felt safe when I stayed in Brugge, and it's a charming city. It looks like it's straight out of a fairytale, and I think your kids would enjoy it. I stayed at the Snuffel Hostel, but it probably isn't the most ideal place to stay with kids. Ghent might be a more central location than Brugge if you want to do a lot of traveling around. Try to make it to Amsterdam if you can! It's worth the train ride.

To visit the breweries, stay in Leuven or other place that makes trips to the Ardnees regions convenient as well (which is not the case of Gent).

Just to add a detail... you can't actually visit most of the breweries in Belgium (and for that matter, most of Europe), or if you can, you have to arrange it for a large group far in advanced. Many of them, though, run a restaurant for visitors. Just don't expect to see the inside of the brewery itself.

I would suggest basing yourself more in the Antwerpen area. I believe you can obtain high-speed train to Amsterdam from there, and it is a smaller city than Brussels. All of Belgium is phenomenally connected by bus/train. You could search through VRBO or Homelidays.com to see if there is accomodations that suit you.

We loved Ghent. I would not hesitate tO recommend it as a home base.

Thank you for the suggestions. Antwerp seems very connected to other places in Belgium, but we travel very slowly, espeically with 2 kids, and we love just biking around, playing at parks and shopping at markets. Ghent seems like a small town, maybe more our style. Thank you. I hope the weather will not be too freezing in April: ).

Ghent seems like a small town It feels that way, but it is actually on a fair bit of land and quite a few folk live and work there. There are even 2 train stations a couple of miles apart.

Ghent has a population of about 240,000.

I recently visited Belgium for my honeymoon in Nov/Dec. We stayed in Bruges and Ghent. We day tripped to Antwerp and Brussels. If I had to choose which one to stay in, I would have to split it and stay (again) in Bruges and Ghent. I was extremely disappointed in Antwerp and would never stay there. Since they are so close to Brussels, we never had to stay there, even the last night; we took an early train from Ghent to the airport.

Wow, thanks! I hear a lot of input about Ghent. We have had a hard time finding accomodations there, not a hotel, but an apartment or something like that, as my husband will be working from there and I have 2 kids, so we would like the space and we like to cook our meals as we are vegan, so going out a lot is not really an option for a long trip and becomes cost prohibitive for us. Any suggestions for an apartment let there? Internet searches on the old standbys (homeaway, vrbo, holidaylettings) have turned up with only a few and also they want over 200EU a night, yikes! Seems like a boutique town to me, as does Brugges for the prices, same there. We are also traveling way off season in the beginning of April, so we ar enot sure why the prices are high and we do not want to rent a car. Thanks for any ideas!

"We are also traveling way off season in the beginning of April, so we are not sure why the prices are high..." Ghent has a large university population, so if anything, short term rentals may be somewhat cheaper in the summer, when there's a surplus of empty apartments.

I was extremely disappointed in Antwerp Kelly Since you were so disappointed in Antwerp can you tell us what went so horribly wrong, please? I'm sure it would help other trying to make a decision. I appreciate you were extremely disappointed, specifics would help so much. Thanks in advance...