Flanders: Why you should go and where to find fun

The Dutch like nipping across the border into Flanders. They find the Flemish less uptight, more rebellious, a bit more inclined towards the dolce vita. They have much better beer, and better food, and their towns buzz long into the evenings with a cheerfulness that announces they are still in business, even if their facades are straight from an Old Master painting, and their glory days long gone.

Outsiders will find it hard to distinguish Dutch visitors from local residents. The Flemish language is really a Dutch dialect, though you might not want to announce that in this cocky, independent-minded little corner of Europe. You can spend an evening in Mechelen or Leuven and not hear an American accent or a word of Chinese, just the rumblings of Flemish, which sounds like a frog coughing up mud. Where are the fabled tourist hordes of Europe? Not here. Or if they are, they're corralled into Bruges like obedient sheep.

Flanders is small, and breaking out of the flock couldn't be easier. Antwerp is 72 minutes from tourist-inundated Amsterdam. Mechelen is seven minutes by train from Brussels airport. Leuven is 26 minutes from Mechelen, platform to platform. You hardly ever have to take a bus. You can walk from Leuven station into the town centre through a street market piled with great rounds of orange-rind cheese and roasting chickens. You can walk into Mechelen, too, over canals and down its main shopping street, passing a carillon school in whose lovely redbrick courtyard you can sit and listen to students practising: ding, dong.

Nobody (except the Dutch) has heard of these places, and Flanders' cities are so small you could hurry through them in the same time it takes to queue at the Eiffel Tower. You ought to stay, though. There are no big-name sights, but the cumulative effect of many small pleasures makes them very worthwhile. You can slip off Europe's beaten path, be like the Dutch and just enjoy the good life. Along the way, you'll be pleasantly surprised at the depth of history and culture, too.

The 15th century was a fine time for Flanders. Its cities were among the richest in Europe, its prestigious universities flourishing, its Flemish school of art distinctive and much admired. Whatever town you're in, set your GPS to find the Grote Markt and you won't go wrong. In these market squares, you'll find terrific ensembles of late-medieval and Renaissance architecture right at the core of old towns with hundreds of listed buildings.

The best Grote Markt might be in Antwerp, thanks to its size, elaborate guildhalls and town hall pin-cushioned with flags. The most satisfying might be in Mechelen, with its Gothic-fantasy town hall at one end and church tower at the other. Baskets of petunias hang from lampposts and wrought-iron animals parade across rooftops. The cobbles are invaded by cafe terraces where locals eat tapas and steaming pots of mussels.

Leuven's Grote Markt has the best single building in Flanders, which is maybe the best town hall in Europe. It is festooned with a Gothic comic strip of sculpted saints and sinners and every window bursts with a beard of geraniums.

Urban loveliness flourishes. Potter around Mechelen and you'll come across an archbishop's palace, a church hung with Rubens paintings and canal promenades where students strum on guitars. In Ghent, a whale's skeleton is improbably suspended behind the altar of St Bavo's Cathedral and street art explodes down back alleys. At night in Leuven the soft yellow glow of street lamps is reflected in damp cobbles, and bicycles lean against old walls, making you feel as if you've stepped from your hotel into a film noir. By day, its medieval marketplaces still host stalls with bolts of cloth, root vegetables and plump bread rolls.