We went to Belgium in May of 2023. Our kids were 11, 9 & 4 at the time. We stayed in Ghent and took trains to get to Brussels & Bruges while there.

A canal ride

We took a canal ride. Ours was a motorized boat that fit about 20-30 people. The guide said everything in Dutch, French, and English. It was impressive. It was really touristy, but I’m glad we did it. It was a fun way to see the city. One of the bridges dates back to the 14th century. We got to see some swans on the ride too!

Horse drawn carriage ride

We saw these, but couldn’t figure out where to get on one before we had to go. It looked like a nice thing to do though.

Cocostory Museum

I personally don’t think this was worth it. If you REALLY like history, then yes. We thought it was a chocolate history and then we’d get to watch them make some chocolate and a have a tasting. It was approximately 90% the history of the cocoa bean and tools and such. They had personal handheld listening things that we scanned at each barcode and it’d talk in the language we chose. They had an adult version and a child version. I wish I had gotten the child one. The adult one went on for quite a while.

There were unlimited samples at the end; but we only got a few small pieces. There were 3 containers with a turn thing at the bottom where a few fell out into your hand. One with dark chocolate pieces, one with milk chocolate and one with white. It is hard when there are 30 people and 3 containers. You give up pretty quickly. The person who was doing the chocolate making demonstrations was on break. They didn’t have a backup person for people who paid for tours. We decided not to wait 15 minutes for him to come back as more and more groups would keep coming. That was the part I wanted to see the most.

City Gates

We walked to 3 of the 4 original city gates. Those were cool to see and a lot of the walk was along a canal. There were so many swans. There were even baby swans when we were there (May). They had grass blockers to protect the nests but some were out on the water. We saw Smedenpoort, Ezelpoort & Kruispoort Gates. We also saw 2 big Dutch windmills. We ran out of time and energy to make it to the 4th gate.

Walk around

Bruges has brick houses and canals. It felt like stepping back in time.