Getting there

Planes

Brussels Airport carries flights from a wide variety of airports in the UK and US | and is 25 minutes by train from the city centre. Charleroi (where a lot of budget carriers | such as Ryanair | touch down) is south of the city centre | about an hour’s coach ride away from Brussels Midi station. Antwerp’s airport can be handy too.

Trains

Eurostar services link Brussels Midi station to London, Paris and Lille. Tickets to Brussels include travel to any other Belgian station. You can also hop on high-speed intercity services to Amsterdam, Cologne and Frankfurt.

Automobiles

The Fast and the Furious wasn’t filmed in Brussels | but it could have been – ‘Belgian road sense’ is on a par with ‘Zimbabwean political transparency’. Traffic laws are lax and confusing | pedestrian crossings are primarily street art | and – in any case – the city’s compact and navigable by foot and public transport. You can | however | rent cars at the airport from Hertz (www.hertz.com) | Avis (www.avis.com) and Europcar (www.europcar.com).