The canal ring is a morning. The rest of the Netherlands is the week.
Which canal boat serves something worth staying on board for. What the Zaanse Schans windmills cost with the cheese farm attached. Whether Keukenhof survives the shuttle queue in April. Reviews of every tour you can book here.
A boat, a windmill village, one museum and the bulb fields.
The four bookings a first Dutch trip is built around. What each costs, and what the people who took it say.
- 01The first afternoonAmsterdam Classic Saloon Boat Cruise with Drinks and CheeseA saloon boat through the ring with cheese and a drink in hand. Ninety minutes that fixes the geography in your head for the rest of the trip.
02The day out of townZaanse Schans, Volendam, and Marken Day TripWindmills at Zaanse Schans, then the harbour at Volendam and the crossing to Marken. One coach, three postcards, back by dinner.
03The one museumVan Gogh Museum TicketTimed entry to the Van Gogh Museum. Book a slot before ten and you get the sunflowers without a wall of phones in front of them.
04Spring onlyKeukenhof Gardens Ticket and TransferKeukenhof plus the shuttle from Amsterdam. Eight weeks a year, and the last fortnight of April is when the beds are fullest.
Glass roof, open bow, or a bar on board. Pick your boat.
The canal ring is a UNESCO site you can only read from the water, and there are more boats than there are ways to describe them. Three kinds of sailing, what it costs to step aboard each, and which one suits the weather you get.
The days out more travellers book than anything else in the Netherlands.
Every Dutch tour we have reviewed →What the booking numbers actually look like here: boats, a painter, a brewery and a bus to the windmills.
1
Van Gogh Museum Ticket
Enter Amsterdam’s Van Gogh Museum at a time you choose 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 1.5 hours, and book early for the best time slots.
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
Amsterdam, then the cities half an hour down the line.
The ring of canals and everything under it, a port city rebuilt in glass, a blue-and-white pottery town, the seat of government, a student city with a canal on two levels, and the tulip coast. Six starting points, and the best day out in each.
The windmills are twenty minutes north, and everybody goes.
Zaanse Schans lines its working mills up along the Zaan, and a coach can add the harbour at Volendam, the causeway to Marken and a cheese farm before you have missed lunch. Further out, Giethoorn has canals instead of roads and Kinderdijk has nineteen mills in a row.
Amsterdam: the boat first, the museums second, the rest on foot.
Everything in Amsterdam →
Almost nobody regrets starting on the water, because the canal ring only makes sense from below street level. After that the city is small enough to walk, and the three decisions worth making are which boat, which museum and what to do once it gets dark.
Covered saloon boat, or an open one
The glass-roofed boats run whatever the weather and carry a recorded guide. The small open ones seat a dozen, take the narrow side canals the big hulls cannot, and hand you a drink. Neither is wrong; the open boats are colder and better.
Two big ones, or four small ones
Van Gogh and the Rijksmuseum are both slot-booked and both take about two hours done properly. Moco, the Rembrandt House and the Royal Palace are an hour each and never sold out, which makes them the better plan on a full day.
Brown cafés, or the district everyone asks about
A brown café crawl through the Jordaan is the local answer: dark wood, sand on the floor, jenever poured to the brim. The Red Light District walks are a separate thing entirely, and the guided ones are the only sensible way to do it.
A small country with an unreasonable number of great museums.
Sunflowers and a self-portrait on one street, Rembrandt and Vermeer on the next, Banksy in a canal house after that. Nearly all of it is timed entry now, which is a nuisance until you realise it means you walk straight in.
- 1Van Gogh Museum Ticketfrom $32
- 2Heineken Experience Ticketfrom $28
- 3Rijksmuseum Entry Ticketfrom $31
What a day in the Netherlands actually costs.
Every tour on the site, grouped by price. A surprising number of the best Dutch days cost less than the round of drinks afterwards.
Canal cruises, museum entry, walking tours and the coach out to the windmills.
Full days with a guide, combined ticket-and-boat packages and the longer runs out to Giethoorn.
Private drivers, chartered boats and the small-group days that keep the group genuinely small.
Three things the Netherlands does that nowhere else can.
Old towns and good museums exist all over Europe. A working village of wind-powered mills, seven million bulbs planted to a plan, and a city that hangs light installations over its canals in midwinter do not.
The Zaanse Schans Mills
These are not scenery. The mills along the Zaan grind pigment, press oil and saw timber, and several still sell what they make at the door. The Zaan valley ran hundreds of them in the seventeenth century, which made it something close to the first industrial zone in Europe. The ones standing today were moved here piece by piece from around the region.
- 1Zaanse Schans, Volendam, and Marken Day Trip★★★★★★★★★★ 4.4 · 15,931 reviews
- 2Zaanse Schans, Edam, Volendam & Marken Bus Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · 15,034 reviews
- 3Day Trip to Zaanse Schans, Edam, Volendam and Marken from Amsterdam★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 5,392 reviews
The Bulb Fields
Keukenhof plants around seven million bulbs each autumn to flower in a sequence, so the garden peaks in a different colour every fortnight. It opens in late March and shuts in the middle of May. The commercial fields around Lisse are a separate sight and free to cycle past, though the blooms are cut for the bulb trade sooner than visitors expect.
- 1Keukenhof Ticket and Roundtrip Shuttle Transfer★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 11,799 reviews
- 2Keukenhof Gardens Ticket and Transfer★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 2,741 reviews
- 3Day Tour Keukenhof and Zaanse Schans Windmills★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 1,549 reviews
The Light Festival
From late November the canals carry a route of light installations, commissioned each year and moored or hung over the water. The city is dark by five in December, which is the point. Most boats run the route with the heating on and something warm handed round, and the whole thing is dismantled in January.
- 1Light Festival Boat with Unlimited Drinks Option★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 2,570 reviews
- 2Light Festival Heated Cruise with Drinks & Snacks★★★★★★★★★★ 3.7 · 1,452 reviews
- 3Light Festival Heated Cruise w/ Drinks & Snacks★★★★★★★★★★ 3.6 · 727 reviews
Half an hour south the country stops looking like the postcard.
Rotterdam lost its centre in 1940 and rebuilt it as an argument about architecture. Delft kept its market square, its pottery and Vermeer. The Hague runs the country and keeps a beach tram running to the dunes. Trains between all three take minutes and run every quarter of an hour.
- 1Harbor Sightseeing Cruisefrom $22
- 2Rotterdam Zoo Blijdorp Entry Ticketfrom $32
- 3Euromast Lookout Tower Ticketfrom $21
Four Dutch bookings that will not wait until you land.
Most of this country can be arranged over breakfast. These four run on timed slots, ticket-release schedules and a flowering season that takes no interest in your dates.
- 01Van Gogh Museum TicketEntry is by timed slot bought online in advance. There is no ticket desk at the door, and the morning slots go first.
- 02Keukenhof Ticket and Roundtrip Shuttle TransferThe gardens open for about eight weeks in spring and are closed the rest of the year. Outside that window there is nothing to visit.
- 03Anne Frank’s Story – Guided Walking Tour through AmsterdamHouse tickets are sold online on a fixed release schedule and go quickly. Walking tours cover the neighbourhood and the history, not the interior.
- 04Light Festival Boat with Unlimited Drinks OptionThe festival runs from late November into January. Boats sell the route as a season and the weekend sailings fill first.
The wind here comes off the North Sea and the rain arrives horizontally.
Nothing in Dutch weather stops for long, but an open boat in November is a mistake and the bulb fields in a gale are worse. The country is unusually well set up for it: covered boats, a very large number of museums, workshops where you make something, and cafés that expect you to sit for two hours.
- 1Van Gogh Museum Ticketfrom $32
- 2Heineken Experience Ticketfrom $28
- 3Rijksmuseum Entry Ticketfrom $31
By place — the Randstad and beyond
By kind of day — deck, gallery, bike or bulb field
Amsterdam, the windmills, the bulb fields and the cities down the line.
KeukenhofThe newest Dutch tour reviews.
More new reviews →
2.5-Hour Cheesemaking Workshop & Clog Making Tour
Read our review →
Amsterdam Old-West Vegan Food Tour with Local Guide
Read our review →
Vecht River: Private Tour sightseeing Cruise with diner
Read our review →
