Best Day Trips From Bruges
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Bruges’ compact core is genuinely a 1-2 day city, which makes it an easy base for day trips across Flanders and the coast. All five of the trips below are reachable by train or bike without a rental car, and none needs more than about 90 minutes each way. Our full Bruges guide covers the city itself; this one is entirely about leaving it for the day.
Ghent: the other great Flemish art city
Ghent sits on the same rail corridor as Bruges-Brussels, roughly 25-30 minutes direct, which makes it the easiest day trip on this list. St Bavo’s Cathedral holds the Ghent Altarpiece, Gravensteen castle looms over the old town, and the Graslei harbour front rivals anything in Bruges itself. Ghent shares two of the same UNESCO frameworks as Bruges (the “Belfries” and “Flemish Béguinages” listings), so the comparison isn’t accidental.
Ypres and Flanders Fields: handle this one soberly
Ypres (Ieper), about 1-1.5 hours away, often via a change at Kortrijk, is WWI ground, not a scenic day out, and worth planning for that tone. The In Flanders Fields Museum sits inside the rebuilt Cloth Hall on the market square. The Menin Gate memorial carries roughly 54,000 names of Commonwealth soldiers with no known grave, and the Last Post has sounded there every evening at 20:00 since 1928, interrupted only during the German occupation of the Second World War. Tyne Cot, the largest Commonwealth war cemetery in the world, is a short trip further out.
Brussels: the capital, an hour away
Brussels is a straightforward ~1 hour by train, with departures roughly every 30 minutes, making it easy to combine with an early or late Bruges day.
The Belgian coast and the Kusttram
Ostend is about 15 minutes from Bruges by direct train, the shortest trip on this list. From there, the Kusttram runs the entire Belgian coastline from De Panne to Knokke-Heist, roughly 67km with 67 stops, reportedly the world’s longest tram line of its kind. A day pass makes it easy to hop off at whichever coastal town looks interesting and catch the next tram onward.
Damme: a short ride into the countryside
Damme, a small historic town just north of the city, is reachable by bike path or by a canal boat along the Damse Vaart. It’s the shortest trip here, closer to a half-day outing than a full one, and a good pick if you’d rather stay close than commit to a full day away from Bruges.
Read more: the festivals and events guide covers what’s on in Bruges itself between day trips, and our full Bruges guide has the getting-there and getting-around basics for the city.