Boutique Hotels in Belgium

Bruges is where the beds are worth having, and our addresses sit inside its old walls. The Pand Hotel is a family-run house in an eighteenth-century carriage house on Pandreitje, a street that was a canal until 1791, twenty metres from the Rozenhoedkaai, with books and panelling downstairs and breakfast in the conservatory, the eggs off the AGA. Members book at rates we hold for the Club.

Hotel Heritage is the grander house, an 1869 townhouse by Louis Delacenserie, who went on to build Antwerp's Central Station, run by Johan and Isabelle Creytens since 1993. It keeps its original ceiling frescoes, the restaurant Le Mystique and a gym in a fourteenth-century cellar, and its roof terrace faces the Belfry, which settles where to have the first drink.

Walk before the first trains arrive. Memling's St Ursula Shrine is in the old St John's Hospital, van Eyck's Madonna with Canon van der Paele in the Groeningemuseum, and Michelangelo's Madonna and Child in the Church of Our Lady, all within twenty minutes of one another on foot, so the canal boats are a pleasure and not a need: half an hour, once. The 366 steps of the Belfry are worth climbing at opening time. Leave the Begijnhof, founded in 1245, and the Minnewater for dusk.

Brouwerij De Halve Maan has brewed here since 1856 and pumps its beer about three kilometres under the streets to the bottling plant, the one piece of engineering in the city that would have impressed the Zwin's merchants.

Ghent is half an hour from Bruges and the one to choose if there is time for one, for the altarpiece, the Gravensteen castle and a university city's evenings. Brussels takes about an hour, for the Grand-Place, the Magritte Museum and Horta's houses. Antwerp is about an hour and a half, for Rubens, the diamond quarter and the fashion shops. Trains run often, and domestic tickets need no reservation.

Moules-frites are the national dish, stoofvlees, beef stewed in brown beer, the Flemish one, and Ghent claims waterzooi, a creamy stew of chicken or fish. A paper cone from a frietkot, with mayonnaise, beats most of what the terraces on the Markt serve. Belgian beer culture is on UNESCO's list of intangible heritage, and the Trappist abbeys of Westvleteren, Chimay and Orval still brew under monastic rules. The praline was created in Brussels; in Bruges the chocolate makers line Wollestraat and Steenstraat.