Our party of 4 active seniors are planning a month trip to Benelux. Our goal is to see as much as we can of Benelux while incorporating bicycling, hiking and walking in our itinerary. We start in Amsterdam on a biking/barge trip 7 days, train to Bruxelles 5 days, train to Brugge 6 days. Train or drive to, Luxembourg and drive to Cochem, Germany, 4 days , drive back to Luxembourg, 1 day, return to Amsterdam 4 days. Our question relates to the 2nd half of the vacation. One option is to train it from Brugge to Luxenbourg. Hire a car in Luxenbourg to drive up to Cochem, and return car to Luxembourg. 4 day car hire. Train from Luxenbourg to Amsterdam alternative option: Hire the car in Brugge, drive to Lux, up to Cochem, back to Lux, and up to Amsterdam via eastern Maastricht route. drop off car in Amsterdam. Anyone familiar with driving these routes: (Brugge to Lux and Lux to Amsterdam.) At the end of September, Are they busy? Are they scenic?. the guide books don't say much about the eastern part of Belgium. Driving times suggested seem to be a bit unrealistic, and have us belting up a highway at 100 kms an hour? However the train trips may be at least 4 - 6 hours, quite expensive, and involve lugging suitcases from train to train to make connections. It's tough to get accurate details on trains as we are more than 90 days out. I have put in travelling July, but maybe the end of September is less crowded and cheaper.
any suggestions re above welcome. Yvonne
Posted by
San Francisco Bay Area (USA)
16058 posts
Brugge to Luxembourg. Mostly freeway (2 carriageways) on flat terrain either agricultural or forested for the most part. The freeway ends in East Belgium and continues on regular 2 lane highway. You get some soft rolling hills as you get closer to Luxembourg. Pretty much the same going from Luxembourg to Amsterdam via Mastricht. (However from Cochem it's faster if you go through the Ruhr. I've been there early October. It can get cool, especially at night and often gray skies, if not rainy that time of the year. I think when I went in October I never saw the sun. But who can predict from year to year? Not particularly scenic for me, at least not until you get closer to Luxembourg where you see some hills. Brugge is beautiful however and Luxembourg too. I liked Amsterdam as well. I've been there a few times. Fun city. Could probably be even better if I smoked (you know what I mean), but I don't. Belgium and the Netherlands are mostly flat. But I would drive if it's 4 of you with luggage. It's easy freeway driving. Not awfully busy except for near the cities, especially Brussels and Amsterdam. The speed limit I think is 120km/h in Belgium (on freeways).
Posted by
OP
surrey, bc, canada
4 posts
Thanks so much Roberto. You have reassured us and helped confirm our decisions.Relieved to hear that there are some freeway stretches and knowing that it is 120 kms per hour helps explain the travel time frame mapquest gave us. It seems to make economic sense to rent a car for the last week of our trip which will get us comfortably from Brugge through Lux, to Cochem and back to Amsterdam. we won't be needing it before that as we'll be doing biking and walking city sightseeing. since posting my ?'s I've also discovered the route from Cochem through the Ruhr, much shorter, so now just have to juggle our accomodations around a bit. Had to laugh at your memory of "no sun" coming from CA you will have notived that particularly. We are from the rainy north west British columbia, Vancouver, so it won't be such a shock, but hoping that September will be half ways decent. so excited about it all.
cheers Yvonne