Belgium and Netherlands April 2026

Day 3: This was a day trip to Ghent (again I bought train tickets that morning on the app) to visit St. Bavo’s Cathedral and the Mystic Lamb. We took a bus from the station, then had about a 10 min walk. I had 12:30 reservations for the virtual reality tour, which was fun and informative, before seeing the cathedral interior and the room with the alterpiece. Beyond gorgeous. I actually loved how much difference the movie and the virtual reality made for my daughter, who didn’t know much of the history.

I know there is more to see in Ghent, but choices….. I can see why people opt to stay here. We ate lunch, bought chocolate (as well as hot chocolate) at Chocolaterie Luc Van Hoorebeke, walked further into town for her to do a bit of shopping, enjoyed the bridge view of the 3 churches, then headed back to Bruges. We finished our stay with evening waffles from Chez Albert, which we ate on a bench facing Market Square.

Busses: We loved using Apple Pay on our phones to tap onto the busses in both Bruges and Ghent and the ease of both bus and train travel, not having to either decide ahead of time which train we’d take nor the trains being too crowded to worry about a seat.

Baarle: Certainly a niche kind of thing but it ended up being both travel and wandering we loved. Because of old treaties, Baarle-Hertog and Baarle-Nassau are intertwined, with 22 Belgian exclaves fully within the Netherlands. There are also seven Dutch enclaves within the Belgian exclaves. So in walking through the town (towns?), you literally walk over a country border numerous times - or stand with one foot in each country. One border goes through the middle of a house and one elderly lady moved the location of her front door at some point so she wouldn’t have to change nationalities. We got a map from the TI office and just spent a couple of hours on our own walking tour. It was a fun quirky stop that provided us with more countryside views.

To get there, I bought train tickets on the app to the closest train station to the border (Turnhout), where we changed to a bus for the final 30-40 minute ride (tapped on board). When leaving (heading to Delft), we took a 40 min. bus to Breda and then a 25 min train to Delft.

We spent the night at the Brownies&Downies Hotel. I did not realize until there that is is part of a small chain designed to give employment to people with Downs Syndrome. It was fun to watch the cheerful atmosphere at breakfast as about 10 young people arrived at work for the day.

Delft: Our Airbnb apartment here was a 10-12 min walk from the train station. We walked upon arrival, but as we were also a 2 min walk from a bus stop, we took the bus thereafter. Tap on and tap off. I used Google Maps for route planning.

Day 1: We arrived late morning on a Thursday and, after dropping off luggage, we hopped a bus to the Royal Delft Museum. I have a weakness for blue ceramics of all kinds and really enjoyed this small museum. At the end, we stopped in the cafe and I had the best Dutch apple pie of the trip with a pot of tea, all served on beautiful Delft china. From there, we bussed back and walked to the old town.

Thursday is market day, so the market square was full of venders and that was fun. We also ended up in a cheese store and couldn’t resist buying several kinds of small rounds of Gouda cheese after sampling many……

Day 2: During the night, I started feeling bad (maybe too much Gouda cheese - ha!) so we opted to have a slow morning and cancelled a potential day trip to Leiden. Later in the day, we wandered the city center more seeing some lovely street murals, bought a piece or two of china, and toured the Old Church (New Church was closed for a concert).

Day 3: This was a day trip to Kinderdijk. I will say this was quite a wonderful day trip. I did a report on the process here. https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/netherlands/need-to-reserved-rotterdam-to-kinderdijk-water-shuttle-in-advance

After returning to Delft, we had a great lunch/dinner at a cute restaurant where the outdoor tables were set up as a mock beach. Walking home from the restaurant, we passed the New Church, which was oddly open. It turns out they had an evening of organ and flute music happening as it was “Easter Eve”. It was casual but quite lovely to sit for a while and listen - and a nice end to our days in Delft.

Amsterdam:

Trains and busses: I bought our train tickets Delft to Amsterdam using the NS app. Within Amsterdam, we just tapped on AND off the trams and busses using Apple Pay. Apparently in Amsterdam you can NOT use a debit card (whether it’s the physical card or in your phone wallet. My daughter only had her debit card (from Switzerland) in her wallet (and with her) so I handed her one of my physical cards for the duration of our stay in Amsterdam. This wasn’t an issue in Bruges or Delft or Baarle.

Day 1: We stayed in another apartment I found via Airbnb. When we arrived to our very well-located room which included breakfast served in the owner’s dining room, we found a large stack of RS guidebooks in the shelf. One morning at breakfast, I asked about that and the owner sheepishly said they are listed in the guidebook, so they get a lot of RS customers (and asked if that’s how I found them). People come - and leave their guidebooks afterwards. lol. So I know a great place for free Amsterdam or Netherlands guidebooks if anyone wants to go get one!

We were hungry so we went for a late lunch at The Pantry, very nearby and which I came across in a trip report by mikliz97 (thank you, as well as several others!). Definitely make a reservation several days ahead, if possible. However they are very good at working people in. My daughter loved it so much, we tried to made a reservation for the next day and they were full. We came back our final day and waited in line for 30-40 minutes for dinner.

Then we wandered on through Amsterdam, ending up at our 90 minute canal boat tour with Bow’s Journeys (thanks, Cupcake!). The boat is from 1911 and has been lovingly restored. It’s more expensive, but it was a max of 12 (we had 10), with free drinks, lovely commentary and stories, and a choice of two directions. We met a family - mom reads the forum but doesn’t comment and had also found the cruise that way. If you see this, chime in!

Day 2: The Anne Frank House was our only plan this day. I had 5:15 tickets for the pre-tour talk, followed by the house itself. The talk is definitely worth the extra time. It was there they had a photo of the Frank family stumbling stones, which I had never thought of even though I regularly watch for them on the pavement (see Day 4). And the guide knew where they are.

I had watched ticket sales for several weeks (on each new ticket release date) and seen that there were always late afternoon tickets available when I woke up. So I didn’t stress about the middle of the night stuff. I just woke up and got my tickets for 5:15 on the day I wanted. That left the whole rest of the day to do whatever we wanted (which, other than eating Dutch pancakes, wasn’t much). I will say the museum felt pretty crowded. Obviously you are in tight spaces and at times it felt a bit claustrophobic. I think an early morning time (before tour groups hit) might help with that.

Day 3: Haarlam and Keukenhof, or The Long Day…..

Corrie Ten Boom House: The very first reservation, after plane and lodging, I made was for the Corrie Ten Boom House in Haarlam. Tickets are free but very limited and are available 6 (edit) months out. I got mine about 5 1/2 months ahead. After looking at options, we opted to take the tram across Amsterdam, then switch to bus on to Haarlam. Less walking and better connections. It still makes sense…..but at the bus stop, the first scheduled bus (we weren’t trying to cut it close) didn’t come. The next back up bus in our plan? 10 minutes late. (We didn’t make a mistake because all the people at the stop also waiting were talking to each other about it.) Clearly this was a misjudgment on our part, but the bus was probably perfectly on time every other day of April.

We arrived at the locked museum door 3 minutes late, with a clear sign on it to “not be late”. Fortunately a very nice person walking in the exit door saw us, came and let us in, and we joined the tour without missing anything (or disrupting). It would have been ok - but this was such a good experience that I am very grateful we didn’t have to miss it!

After a little lunch, we visited The St. Bavo Church in Haarlam, a stunning place, before we made our way on to the train station.

Knowing we’d be in Haarlam, I bought the combo ticket to Keukenhof leaving from near the train station. This did mean we had to return to Haarlam instead of Amsterdam, but it was all easy. I saved buying Keukenhof tickets until after I knew when I would get Anne Frank tickets.

Kuekenhof. was an absolute delight, just as I had hoped. April 7 was early, but there were plenty of tulips and hyacinth to see. After a couple of hours, my head had processed about all the beauty it could manage. We did not see it all, by any means - we could easily have spent a couple more hours trying to cover more ground. I would go back again!

When leaving, you had to remember your bus number and where it dropped you off. The bus line back to Haarlam was short - we saw a couple of other bus lines that were pretty long, but I’m not sure where they went. We were dropped back at the station, where we immediately hopped a train back to Amsterdam and then the closest tram to The Pantry.

Leaving (Day 4): My daughter was catching a flight home and I was taking the Eurostar on to London for Part 2 of my trip. We both needed to head off around 12:30, so had a bit of time. She opted for a little shopping. I opted for a tram ride to see the Frank family stumbling stones in front of where they lived at Merwedeplein 37. There is a small park in front of the somewhat modern-looking apartments with a statue, and then the stones in front of the building. I didn’t stay long, but while I was there, a woman went up the stairs toward the apartment and it made me wonder how it might feel to actually live in the house of someone so remembered.

Then it was back to pick up luggage at our apartment, where the owners had kindly allowed us to leave it, and head to Central station before going our separate ways.

I did not not expect to like Amsterdam as much as I did. I’m not sure why. We never thought about coffee shops or red light districts. No one tried to ride us over with their bikes, either. Ha!
It was just a nice city, with good transportation, that I need to return to for all the interesting things we didn’t fit into this trip. We left so much left unseen in both countries.

Additional thanks to Windyram and Dutch_traveler and so many others. I spent a lot of time reading all the Belgium and Netherlands threads and answers and trip reports. There is a wealth of knowledge here!

Thanks for sharing this. The Bruges portion is of particular interest to me, since I will be there in 6 weeks.

Hi TexasTravelMom, thanks for the excellent trip report. I’m glad I was of some help to you during the preparation. I’m also glad that you enjoyed Amsterdam. You’ve only seen a glimpse of the city, so that’s a good reason to come back for more.

I do want to make a comment about the name of your hotel in Delft as I’ve experienced that some non-Dutch speakers can get terribly upset about the use of the term “downies”. In the Netherlands “downies” is used as a term of endearment (for lack of a better word) for people with Down Syndrome. Over here it’s by no means a derogatory or insulting term, the complete opposite actually. I did already know Brownies&Downies for their nice restaurants with great food and atmosphere, but until now I didn’t know they had a hotel also. How did you like staying there?

@BB, it’s a lovely town and I’m not at all sorry I chose it, as opposed to other options. Busses and trains were so easy that we could have taken several day trips if we’d had more time. Also we were never in the city center during the day, so never ran into crowds. That probably varies by time of year.

@Dutch_traveler, you are right - I didn’t make it inside any museums, plus all the other places I have on my list. So it definitely needs to be another trip - only now I am not hesitant.

Thank you for more insight into The Brownies&downies Hotel. Truthfully, I hadn’t connected the name and not till we were on our way and my daughter asked if there was any connection did it ever enter my mind. So we looked it up. I think there are two in The Netherlands and maybe a couple in South Africa.

I had chosen the hotel because 1) there were only a couple of choices in Baarle; 2) it was well-located for the bus; 3) it looked simple but sufficient; 4) price was good. The hotel was in an older building that had been restored. There were not very many rooms and it wasn’t fancy, but ours was equipped, bed decent, wifi good, clean, good bathroom, and a set breakfast was included. We were on the first floor (no elevator). Breakfast came assembled with boiled egg, cheese, deli-style ham, croissant, butter, jelly, yogurt, juice, & coffee. Would I stay again? Sure!

I mentioned I continued on to London. I had 2 friends join me there, one of whom has an adult child with Down’s Syndrome and the other works with special needs kids in our school system. Each trip we take together my friend looks for a school for special needs kids to visit and reaches out to any Down’s Syndrome families we meet along the way. It really is a lovely thing to watch. I still have to make myself be still and quiet when she does this, but I have yet to see a parent not smiling after a conversation - lots of hugs. She would have been in heaven here - and not at all offended by the name. So even that never occurred to me. I would have stayed here on purpose had I known, but was happy to have stayed there by accident.

I am hooked, hooked I say, hooked on Baarle! And who would have known that there are 60 Brownies&Downies restaurants (breakfast and lunch) across the Netherlands. That is exactly and precisely what Mrs Nigel and I are searching for.

TexasTravelMom, you have well and truly found and pressed our buttons!! Thank you thank you thank you.

Haha, Nigel! You are welcome! I enjoyed the history of Baarle and why it’s like that. Maybe not blockbuster, but definitely unusual. You’ll have a car, if you go - traffic was light and roads nice. I enjoyed our bus rides to and from.

we drive blindly past so many cool things. Both the town and the inclusive hospitality are just us, all over.

Magic!

Thank you for sharing!
I wanted to add that I got my Corrie ten Boom house tickets in September for this June. I'm glad you could get them 6 weeks out, though.

I have Bow's Journeys cruise reserved for my last evening of vacation with my daughter (did this a few weeks ago but probably was on the early side). I'm glad you had a good experience with them.

So glad you could take this trip! I'll be re-reading your report the next weeks.

Agh! Going back to edit! I DID get my Corrie TenBoom tickets nearly 6 months out - not 6 weeks! It was about 5 1/2 months…..

Ah! Not surprised. I just didn't want anyone thinking they had a good chance 6 weeks out. 🙂

Thanks for sharing- sounds like a great trip. Baarle has always fascinated me and now I am even more curious to visit! Just one comment, we were in Amsterdam twice last year and used our debit cards to ride the trams, so I'm not sure if maybe the issue was with your daughter's card specifically but it worked fine for us. Glad you had such a nice time.

Great trip report TravelTexasMom! Now I'm not so sad that our spring trip to Belgium was cancelled this year. I've got new ideas and tips to insert in the itinerary for next year. Thanks.

I am really hoping to reschedule our Netherlands trip that we had to cancel last year, so I very much enjoyed your report. We have a close family member with Down syndrome, so I was interested to read about Brownies and Downies--I looked up the cafe locations and there are many.

Blockquote it made me wonder how it might feel to actually live in the house of someone so remembered.

Your above comment reminded me of a novel I read . The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden (2024), which is about a Dutch woman who grows up in a house her family took after the previous Jewish owners were arrested and removed.

On a lighter note, I enjoyed revisiting the Netherlands and Belgium through your report.