A country you can cross before lunch. A city that takes a week.
Which canal boat actually feeds you. What the Zaanse Schans bus really costs. Whether Giethoorn repays two hours on the road. Every tour and ticket in the Netherlands, reviewed and priced.
A boat, a Van Gogh, a windmill village and a field of tulips.
The four bookings a first Dutch trip is built around, what each costs, and the thing nobody tells you until you are standing there.
01The first eveningAmsterdam Luxury Canal Cruise + Unlimited Drinks & Bites optionNinety minutes through the ring, drinks poured on board, back where you started before dinner. Take the covered boat when the wind is up.
02The one museumVan Gogh Museum TicketTimed entry to the Van Gogh, and the slots go weeks ahead in summer. Late afternoon is the quietest hour on the top floor.
03The day outZaanse Schans, Volendam, and Marken Day TripWindmills at Zaanse Schans, then the harbour at Volendam and the ferry over to Marken. One bus, three villages, back by six.
04Spring onlyKeukenhof Ticket and Roundtrip Shuttle TransferKeukenhof opens for about eight weeks from late March. The shuttle ticket saves you the parking scrum at the gate.
Amsterdam was laid out for boats, and it still reads best from one.
The ring canals are a UNESCO site you can only really see from below the bridges. Three kinds of boat day, what it costs to step aboard each one, and which one suits the weather you get.
Six places within an hour of Amsterdam Centraal.
A harbour city rebuilt in glass, a village that swapped streets for canals, the seat of government beside the North Sea, and the workshops that still paint blue on white. Each one a train ride, each one a whole day.
Everything worth seeing is inside an hour of the ring road.
Zaanse Schans has the working mills, Volendam has the harbour and the eel smokers, Marken is a former island you reach by dyke. Add Giethoorn or Kinderdijk when you have a full day, and the whole thing runs on one coach ticket.
Amsterdam pays you back for booking the timed things first.
Everything in Amsterdam →
The museums run on entry slots, the boats run every twenty minutes, and the walking is flat. Get the timed tickets in the diary, then let the rest of the day fall where it wants.
Open boat, or the glass roof
The small open boats hold a dozen people and a guide who lives here. The big glass-topped ones run to a recorded track and take two hundred. Rain decides it more often than budget does.
Van Gogh, the Rijks, Anne Frank and the rest
All three sell entry by the half hour and all three run out in high season. The Anne Frank House releases its slots six weeks ahead and they are gone the same week.
On two wheels, with a guide in front
Riding here is only frightening for the first ten minutes. A guided group keeps you off the tram rails and out of the scooter lane, and covers more ground in two hours than a walk does in four.
The Dutch bookings travellers make more than any other.
Every review on the site →Museum slots, canal boats and the coach out to the windmills. These are the ones that sell out, and what each one is actually like.
1
Van Gogh Museum Ticket
Review of Amsterdam’s Van Gogh Museum ticket: timed entry, famous paintings, optional audio guide, practical tips, value, and who should go.
From · $32
Read our review →
2
Amsterdam Classic Saloon Boat Cruise with Drinks and Cheese
from $21
3
Heineken Experience Ticket
from $28
4
Rijksmuseum Entry Ticket
from $31
5
Icebar Entry Ticket with 3 Drinks
from $26
6
Keukenhof Ticket and Roundtrip Shuttle Transfer
from $40
7
Anne Frank’s Story – Guided Walking Tour through Amsterdam
from $39
8
Moco Museum Amsterdam Entrance Tickets with Banksy & More
from $18
The Dutch put their best paintings in walk-in distance of each other.
Two hundred metres of Museumplein hold the Van Gogh, the Rijksmuseum and the Stedelijk, and the Mauritshuis is forty minutes down the line in The Hague. All of it is timed entry, so the decision is which slot, not which day.
- 1Van Gogh Museum Ticketfrom $32
- 2Heineken Experience Ticketfrom $28
- 3Rijksmuseum Entry Ticketfrom $31
Rotterdam, Delft and The Hague sit in a forty-minute triangle.
One city was flattened in 1940 and rebuilt in glass and steel; the next kept every gable and a canal you can hear yourself think beside; the third put the government, the Mauritshuis and a seaside pier in the same postcode. Three trains, one day, if you start early.
Every day out in the south →
What a day in the Netherlands actually costs.
Every tour on the site, grouped by price. More than half of the good Dutch days come in under the price of a sit-down lunch.
Museum and attraction entry, city walks, the short canal loops and the ferry-and-a-map kind of day.
The standards: guided canal boats with drinks, the Zaanse Schans coach, Keukenhof with a shuttle, bike tours with a leader.
- 1Van Gogh Museum Ticketfrom $32
- 2Rijksmuseum Entry Ticketfrom $31
- 3Zaanse Schans, Volendam, and Marken Day Tripfrom $43
Private drivers, dinner cruises, the multi-village full days and the once-a-trip splurges that earn it.
Three things that happen nowhere else on earth.
Old towns and good museums exist all over Europe. A village with canals instead of roads, a riverbank of working industrial windmills, and seven million bulbs flowering to a schedule do not.
Giethoorn
The old part of the village has no car in it at all. Peat diggers cut the waterways three hundred years ago and the houses ended up on islands, joined by more than a hundred little wooden bridges. Everything moves by whisper boat, so called because the electric outboards make almost no sound. Two hours from Amsterdam, and the middle of the day is the busy hour.
- 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
Zaanse Schans
These are not decorative mills. They grind pigment, press linseed oil and saw timber the way six hundred of them did along the Zaan when this was the first industrial district in the world. Several are open to walk into, where you stand beside the gears while the whole building creaks. The site itself is free to walk; the mills and the workshops charge separately.
- 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 roughly seven million bulbs each autumn for a garden that opens in late March and shuts in the middle of May. The commercial fields around Lisse and Hillegom are the bigger sight and they are free, though they are cut for the bulb trade the moment the colour peaks. Go on a weekday, and go early, because everyone else has read the same advice.
- 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
Four Dutch tickets that will not wait for you.
Most of this country can be arranged over breakfast on the day. These four run on release dates, timed slots and a growing season, none of which cares when your flight lands.
- 01Anne Frank’s Story – Guided Walking Tour through AmsterdamEntry is by timed slot only and the slots are released about six weeks ahead. They are usually gone within days of going up.
- 02Van Gogh Museum TicketEvery ticket carries a half-hour entry window. In July and August the good windows are taken well before the week begins.
- 03Keukenhof Ticket and Roundtrip Shuttle TransferThe garden opens for roughly eight weeks from late March. Outside that window there is nothing to visit.
- 04Rijksmuseum Entry TicketTimed entry again, and the Gallery of Honour is shoulder to shoulder from eleven. The first slot of the day is the one to want.
Rain comes off the North Sea sideways. Plan for it.
It rarely pours all day here, but it will rain at some point and the wind makes an umbrella useless. The answer is the same one the Dutch use: put the indoor thing in the middle of the day and keep walking either side of it. Glass-roofed boats keep running in weather that stops the open ones.
- 1Van Gogh Museum Ticketfrom $32
- 2Heineken Experience Ticketfrom $28
- 3Rijksmuseum Entry Ticketfrom $31
By place, city and village
By kind of day, water, wheels, gallery or gable
Amsterdam, the villages, the bulb fields and the harbour cities.
KeukenhofJust reviewed, from the ring canals outward.
The rest of the new ones →
Discover Alkmaar with a self-guided Outside Escape city game tour
Read our review →
3 hour boarding ticket Summer sailing from Wemeldinge (Zeeland)
Read our review →
Keukenhof Gardens and Tulip Experience Tour from Amsterdam
Read our review →
Canal Cruise and Jewish Cultural Quarter Tickets
Read our review →
2.5-Hour Cheesemaking Workshop & Clog Making Tour
Read our review →
Discover Amsterdam’s city center in this Outside Escape game tour
Read our review →
Marken, Volendam and Edam: Private Full-Day Tour
Read our review →
Rijksmuseum & Amsterdam City Center Semi-Private Tour 12ppl Max
Read our review →
