Amsterdam takes three days. The rest of the country takes the train.
Which canal cruise really includes the drinks. Whether Zaanse Schans beats Giethoorn on your one day out of the city. Reviews of every tour you can book in the Netherlands.
A boat through the ring, Van Gogh, the working windmills, the Jordaan on foot.
The four bookings a first trip to the Netherlands hangs off. What each one costs, and what the people who took it say.
01The first eveningAmsterdam Classic Saloon Boat Cruise with Drinks and CheeseA saloon boat through the ring with cheese and a glass in hand. Ninety minutes and the geography of the city finally makes sense.
02The one you came forVan Gogh Museum TicketTwo hundred paintings and the letters underneath them, on the Museumplein. Entry is timed, so the slot is the whole decision.
03The day out of townZaanse Schans, Volendam, and Marken Day TripWorking windmills on the Zaan, then the harbour at Volendam and the boat across to Marken. One coach, three different countrysides.
04The hard hourAnne Frank’s Story – Guided Walking Tour through AmsterdamThe Jordaan streets the Frank family lived and hid in, walked with someone who knows the addresses. The house itself is booked separately, and early.
Amsterdam first, then whichever city the train reaches before lunch.
A ring of seventeenth-century canals, a port city rebuilt in glass, a seat of government with a beach at the end of the tram line, a cathedral tower with no cathedral, a bulb town and a river crossing in the deep south. Six starting points, and the best day out in each.
Open boat, glass-roofed cruiser, or dinner going past the bridges.
Three kinds of evening on the ring canals, what it costs to step aboard each one, and who each is actually for.
Rembrandt and Van Gogh are ten minutes apart on the same square.
Every museum in Amsterdam →
The Museumplein holds two of the great collections in Europe and a third building that mostly shows Banksy. All three sell timed entry, all three fill from mid-morning, and none of them wants your rucksack.
Van Gogh, and when to go in
The collection runs chronologically from the dark Dutch years to the wheat fields, with the letters set beside the canvases they describe. Take a slot before ten or after four; the middle of the day is shoulders.
The Rijksmuseum, done properly
Eight hundred years of the country in one building, with the Night Watch at the end of the Gallery of Honour. Everyone starts there, which is exactly why the Asian pavilion and the doll houses are worth doing first.
The Jordaan, on foot
The canal houses, the school, the bookshop and the annexe address, told by a guide as you stand in front of them. The museum releases its own timed tickets six weeks ahead and they go the same day.
The most popular days out in the Netherlands.
Every Dutch tour review →The tours more travellers take than anything else in the country, and what earns each of them the slot.
1
Van Gogh Museum Ticket
Enter Amsterdam’s Van Gogh Museum at a reserved time and follow the artist’s life through more than 200 paintings, 500 drawings, and 750 letters. You can explore independently or add an audio guide in 11 languages. Allow at least 90 minutes, though the collection and temporary exhibitions can easily keep you there for two hours or more.
From · $32
Read our review →
2
Amsterdam Classic Saloon Boat Cruise with Drinks and Cheese
from $21
3
Amsterdam Luxury Canal Cruise + Unlimited Drinks & Bites option
from $18
4
Heineken Experience Ticket
from $28
5
Rijksmuseum Entry Ticket
from $31
6
Classic Boat Cruise with Optional Cheese & Wine
from $18
7
Evening Cruise with Optional Wine and Snacks
from $22
8
75 Minute City Canal Cruise with Audio Guide
from $17
Working windmills, a harbour full of eel smokers, a village with no road.
An hour past Centraal the country flattens into polder, dyke and water. Zaanse Schans and the fishing villages run every day of the year; Keukenhof runs to a growing season and Giethoorn to the weather.
There are more bicycles here than Dutch people, and the country is flat.
Every road has a lane for them, every station has a garage under it, and the etiquette is unforgiving until somebody explains it. An hour behind a guide sorts that out; a day in the polder swaps the traffic for dyke paths, a cheese farm and a clog workshop.
What a day in the Netherlands actually costs.
Every tour on the site, grouped by what it costs. Most of the best Dutch days come in under the price of dinner, because most of them last ninety minutes.
Canal cruises, museum entry, city walks, bike hire and the shuttle out to the bulb fields.
Full days by coach: Zaanse Schans and the fishing villages, Giethoorn, the southern cities, long food walks.
- 1Van Gogh Museum Ticketfrom $32
- 2Rijksmuseum Entry Ticketfrom $31
- 3Zaanse Schans, Volendam, and Marken Day Tripfrom $43
Private drivers, chartered boats and the guided days built around one household.
Three things that only happen in the Netherlands.
Old towns and good galleries exist all over Europe. Industrial windmills still sawing timber, seven million bulbs planted for eight weeks, and a village where the front doors are reached by boat do not.
The Zaan Windmills
These are not decoration. The mills on the Zaan ground pigment, pressed linseed and sawed the planks that built the merchant fleet, and a handful of them still do it on a windy Tuesday. You walk in under the turning cap, the whole timber frame groaning, and somebody sells you the paint they made upstairs.
- 1Zaanse Schans, Volendam, and Marken Day Trip★★★★★★★★★★ 4.4 · 15,931 reviews
- 2Zaanse Schans, Edam, Volendam & Marken Bus Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · 15,034 reviews
- 3Guided Zaanse Schans, Windmills & Cheese Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.4 · 4,826 reviews
Keukenhof and the Bulb Fields
Seven million bulbs go into thirty-two hectares of woodland garden every autumn so that it can open for roughly eight weeks in spring and then shut again. The fields around Lisse are the free half of the show, striped in blocks of colour that are headed for a vase in another country by May.
- 1Keukenhof Ticket and Roundtrip Shuttle Transfer★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 11,799 reviews
- 2Tour to Keukenhof Gardens with Windmill Cruise★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 2,819 reviews
- 3Keukenhof Gardens Ticket and Transfer★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 2,741 reviews
Giethoorn
Peat diggers left a village of islands linked by footbridges and no road at all through the old centre, so the post, the shopping and the neighbours all arrive by boat. The electric whisper boats are silent enough that you hear the ducks, which is the entire point and also the reason it gets busy by eleven.
- 1Giethoorn Day Trip with Boat Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.4 · 2,372 reviews
- 2Giethoorn, Afsluitdijk, Zaanse Schans Day Tour Incl Hotel Pick Up★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 1,679 reviews
- 3Village & National Park Canal Cruise with Coffee★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · 1,596 reviews
Four Dutch bookings that will not wait.
Most of this country can be decided over breakfast. These four run on timed entry, a growing season and a shuttle timetable that takes no interest in when your flight lands.
- 01Anne Frank’s Story – Guided Walking Tour through AmsterdamThe house releases timed tickets six weeks ahead and they are gone the day they appear. A guided walk of the neighbourhood is the fallback, and it is a good one.
- 02Keukenhof Ticket and Roundtrip Shuttle TransferThe gardens open for about eight weeks in spring and then close for the year. Outside that window there is nothing to visit.
- 03Van Gogh Museum TicketEntry runs on half-hour slots and the museum sells out most summer days before noon.
- 04Rijksmuseum Entry TicketTimed entry again, and the Night Watch hall is the busiest room in the country between ten and two.
It arrives sideways off the North Sea, and the day still works.
Dutch rain is a twenty-minute event with a wind behind it, which is why so much of the country is built to be enjoyed from under a roof. Glass-topped boats, galleries, a brewery, a cheese counter and a griddle of pancakes all beat waiting it out in a hotel lobby.
By city — and everywhere the train reaches
By kind of day — hull, saddle, gallery or coach
Amsterdam, the Zaan, the bulb fields and two cities south.
Zaanse Schans
Keukenhof
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