Belgium concentrates an improbable share of Europe's pleasures into a small space: Bruges's swan-filled canals, Ghent's towers, Brussels's Grand-Place — perhaps the continent's most beautiful square — plus the world's best beer tradition, chocolate to match, and battlefields and art cities two centuries deep.
Flanders holds the medieval showpieces: Bruges, Ghent and Antwerp (Rubens's city and the diamond capital), plus Flanders Fields' WWI memorials around Ypres. Brussels mixes the Grand-Place, Art Nouveau streets and the EU quarter with the country's best restaurant density. French-speaking Wallonia offers the Ardennes' forested hills, citadel-topped Namur and Liège, and Waterloo's battlefield south of the capital.
The medieval cloth trade made Flanders rich — hence the belfries, beguinages and Flemish Primitive paintings — before Burgundian, Spanish, Austrian and French rule layered on. Independent since 1830, Belgium became the crossroads where Europe fought (Waterloo 1815, the world wars) and where it now governs: Brussels hosts the EU and NATO.
A trading heart of Europe — Antwerp's port and diamond trade, chemicals, pharma and chocolate exports — with services centered on multilingual Brussels, the continent's de facto capital.
Around 1,500 beers including the Trappist ales brewed in working monasteries; chocolate raised to haute couture; frites with a hundred sauces; comic-strip heritage from Tintin to the Smurfs; and a surrealist streak from Magritte that suits a country with three official languages and one shared appetite.
Bruges is the perfectly preserved postcard, busiest by day and magical after the day-trippers leave; Ghent is livelier and more lived-in, with equally stunning towers. They are 30 minutes apart — see both.
A Trappist ale (Westmalle, Chimay, Orval), a lambic or gueuze in Brussels, a West Flanders red, and whatever the café's beer menu recommends — each style comes in its own dedicated glass.
Three to five covers Brussels plus Bruges, Ghent and Antwerp comfortably by train — distances are tiny; add days for Ypres's WWI sites or the Ardennes.