So you've arrived for Euro 2000. What do you do on your days off, when England aren't playing and you can't face the trek out to Liege to watch Denmark play the Czech Republic?
The Low Countries, as we always used to call them, or Benelux in even more drab Euro-speak, don't exactly have an exotic reputation. There's a temptation to view them like East Anglia with a funny accent. But that would be a mistake. Their pleasures may be slow burning (especially in Amsterdam's coffee shops) but these countries, have more capital H heritage than you might imagine.
Getting around
Why brave Belgian driving - among the worst in Europe - when the trains are so convenient? If based in Brussels, you will be able to get to most games by rail, in clean, fast trains without hassle. Almost all the trains stop at each of the three main stations in Brussels: Gare du Nord, Gare Central and Gare du Midi. Tickets are reasonable (buy at the station; they are more expensive on board).
Charleroi, where England meet Germany on June 17, is 45 minutes away, Bruges is an hour, Rotterdam less than a couple of hours and Amsterdam half an hour beyond that.
Accommodation
This is expensive: you won't get anywhere remotely nice in either capital for less than about £50 a night. Arriving on Eurostar at Brussels' Gare du Midi, you will be landing in one of the more gruesome parts of town. Grab a cab to somewhere more salubrious - the centre is not far away. All the stations are prime sites for pick-pockets, and the Gare du Nord is in the red-light district.
If you're flush, the Metropole is a good central hotel, in Place de Brouckere. If not, you could base yourself in an apartment hotel - like self- catering bedsits. Try the City Garden in Rue Joseph II or Orion, near the fish market in Quai au Bois à Bruler.
Many small hotels in the Netherlands are part of chains such as Golden Tulip or SAS and, because they serve a business clientele, are quite expensive and booked up during the week. If you're on the road, the motorway service areas are much more frequent than in Britain and usually have cheap hotels attached.
Drinking
You could start a day's sightseeing campaign over a Belgian beer. If the authorities haven't closed all the bars in anticipation of trouble (and this would take a major domestic crisis), you should be able to find a drink any time from about 8am, even if it is only a coffee. But it would be a crime not to sample the beer while you're here. Belgians take their beer quite as seriously as the French take their wine, but are rather less poncy about it, apart from a weird proclivity for funny beer glasses. Every brew has its own shape: Kwak comes in a specimen-shaped glass secured in a wooden cradle.
Belgium has twice as many bars per head of population as England has pubs and, at a recent count, more than 90 breweries producing at least 400 beers ranging from Stella Artois at Leuven's giant Interbrew factory to country bars where the owner brews his own round the back.
Don't stick with Stella or the other mass lagers, Jupiler or Maes - the fruit beers such as Framboise (made from raspberries) or Kriek (cherries) are wonderful, as are the geuzes , brewed around Brussels. The white beers ( wit bier in Flanders, blanche in Wallonia) are very refreshing on a summer's day. Just remember that Belgian beers are more potent than British ones.
Eating
Belgium has some of the best restaurants in the world. They don't believe in nouvelle cuisine and see it as their mission in life to fill you up. You must try the frites with mayonnaise, because they are better than any chips you have ever tasted before. And don't forget the moules .
Even the fast food is better here: the Quick hamburger chain is a cut above McDonald's. In fact, it's very hard to eat badly, even in the cheapest bar in any central square, and you'll get a good steak 'n' frites for under a tenner.
In Brussels, there are hundreds of restaurants around the Grand Place, especially in Rue des Bouchers, and outdoor fish restaurants a few hundred yards away in Place St Catherine. You could splurge out at one of the world's great restaurants, such as the Villa Lorraine, Chaussée de la Hulpe or Comme Chez Soi, Place Rouppe, for around £250 for two, if you can get in. Or you could try somewhere more earthi1y Bruxellois such as Chez Vincent in the Rue des Bouchers. A personal favourite is In 't Spinnekopke (about £40 for two).
What to see
Nip over to Ghent, 30 miles west of Brussels, half-an-hour on the train, and see Van Eyck's Mystic Lamb in St Baaf's cathedral (closed like many public buildings for lengthy lunch breaks, so don't arrive between noon and 2pm).
In Brussels, see the Brueghels in the Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts - next door is the modern gallery with the great Belgian surrealists such as Magritte and Delvaux - here, they coordinate opening hours so that when one is closed for lunch, the other is open. Then there's the strip-cartoon gallery in Rue des Sables, (this is the home of Tintin after all), and even an underpants museum.
Or you could wander into the municipal art gallery in Charleroi's central Place du Manège, also called the Palais des Beaux Arts, to see more works by Magritte.
Sixty miles west of Brussels, Bruges is famously pretty, twee and medieval.
In Amsterdam, the Rembrandts, Vermeers and Hals in the Rijksmuseum in Stadhouderskadse are unmissable. As is the Anne Frank House in Prinsengracht. Then again, there's always the tattoo museum.
Historic sites
If it's battlefields you want, Waterloo is 12 miles south of Brussels; the Ardennes forest - where Hitler's frozen army staged its last assault in a blizzard at Christmas in 1944 - is 100 miles east; Arnhem - where Monty's men tried to take a bridge too far earlier that autumn - is in eastern Holland, north of Eindhoven, where England play their opening game against Portugal on June 12; or, there's first-world-war sites stretching from Mons to Passchendaele and Ypres.
Waterloo is a bit tacky. But I defy anyone not to be moved at Ypres - 70 miles west of Brussels - where 430,000 Britons lie in cemeteries. The local fire brigade sounds the Last Post under the Menin Gate every night.
Go also to St Symphorien cemetery near Mons, 20 miles west of Charleroi, where Private J Parr, the first British casualty of the war lies a few yards from Private J L Price, killed just as the armistice was sounding.
Stand in this quiet spot, in the fields of southern Belgium and remember, whatever the tabloid hype this summer, that what you're there to see is only a game.
