For Military Buffs

I call this a "military buff's tour," but it may be more appropriate to think of it as a military memorial tour. Belgium and Luxembourg have long histories as battlefields, usually in other countries' quarrels. Belgium was particularly badly handled in World War I, and Holland in World War II. Although this itinerary revolves around a grim subject, it also passes through scenic parts of all three countries. The tour is best done by car.

Day 1: Waterloo

South of Brussels, the French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte met final defeat at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815. You can tour this largely preserved battlefield and visit the Duke of Wellington's headquarters, now the Musée Wellington.

Day 2: Drive to Ypres (Ieper)

A 2-hour drive from Brussels, bypassing Ghent and Kortrijk, brings you to the medieval cloth town of Ypres, a crucible of fighting on the World War I Western Front that claimed the lives of 500,000 soldiers -- Allied and German. The now peaceful Flanders fields are sprinkled with military cemeteries and a few sections of trenches.

Day 3: Drive to Bastogne

Drive east past Tournai and Mons, to the Meuse River at Namur. Continuing eastward into the rolling Ardennes hills, you'll pass the scenes of many a hard-fought action from the Battle of the Bulge in the winter of 1944 and 1945, at places like Marche-en-Famenne, Rochefort, and La Roche-en-Ardenne. None was harder than the struggle that surrounded U.S. troops waged to hold the strategic crossroads town of Bastogne. Visit the star-shaped Mardasson Memorial outside of town.

Day 4: Drive to Eupen

Cross into Luxembourg today. Starting at Echternach, follow the Our River upstream along the German border. This was a thinly manned but staunchly defended U.S. front line on December 16, 1944, when the surprise German offensive in the Ardennes erupted. Pass through Vianden and Clervaux; then take the road the GI's dubbed the "Skyline Drive," to Sankt-Vith. From Losheim to Rocherath-Krinkelt, you'll cross the assault route taken by Hitler's SS panzer divisions. Foxholes once held by American troops still exist in the forests. The U.S. Fifth Corps headquarters was in Eupen.

Day 5: Drive to Nijmegen

Take the expressway via Liège and Maastricht, for rapid deployment to Eindhoven, the first scene of action in the Allied offensive into Nazi-occupied Holland in September 1944. Follow the bitterly contested "Hell's Highway" north through Veghel and Grave to Nijmegen. The U.S. 82nd Airborne Division suffered heavy losses taking and holding the Groesbeek Heights east of town, the road bridges over the Maas River at Grave, and the Waal in Nijmegen.

Day 6: Arnhem

From Nijmegen, north to Arnhem is just 16km (10 miles) -- a distance that proved fatal for the British 1st Airborne Division, which landed on heathland west of the city to take Arnhem's road bridge over the Rhine -- the famous "bridge too far." The British held out for a week at Oosterbeek, while Polish paratroops landed at Driel.

Day 7: Return to Brussels

An expressway goes southwest from Arnhem to connect with the north-south expressway at Breda. From there, you can go south via Antwerp to Brussels.