Which boat, which windmill, which day trip.
Which canal cruise includes the drinks. Which Zaanse Schans trip stops at Marken as well. What Keukenhof costs once the shuttle is added. Every tour in the Netherlands, reviewed and priced.
Windmills, tulips and Van Gogh: the Dutch shortlist.
A cruise through the canal ring, a village of working mills, a museum you booked a slot for, and a wheel of cheese you were allowed to taste. These are the days most Netherlands trips get planned around.
Not every Amsterdam canal cruise is the same boat.
All 164 canal cruises →
Open deck or glass roof, live skipper or audio guide, drinks included or a bar you pay at. These three carry the most people. The full list splits the rest by what kind of hour you want on the water.
Open boat, the bar stays open
Nothing between you and the gable tops, a crew that keeps pouring, and a route that leaves the Jordaan for the Amstel while the light goes orange.
Saloon boat with cheese and wine
Varnished wood and low windows at water level, a board of Dutch cheese, and a skipper working the Herengracht ring at walking pace.
Evening cruise under the bridge lights
The seven arches of the Reguliersgracht line up lit once it is dark, and the ring goes quiet enough to hear the water off the bow.
Van Gogh, Heineken and a boat: what the Netherlands books.
Every Dutch review →More travellers take these than anything else in the country, and each one earns its slot for a different reason.
1
Van Gogh Museum Ticket
Review of Amsterdam’s Van Gogh Museum ticket: timed entry, famous paintings, optional audio guide, crowd tips, value, and practical advice.
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 is a small city with a long waiting list.
The Anne Frank walk, the hall with the Night Watch in it, the evening boat with a bar on board. The centre is crossable in a morning, which is exactly why the good times go first.
Amsterdam is expensive. Its best days out are not.
Every tour on the site by what it actually costs, with the three most popular in each band.
Canal cruises, museum entry and the audio-guide hours. Most of the city centre sits in this band.
The full day out: Zaanse Schans and Marken by coach, Keukenhof with the shuttle, food walks with the tastings included.
- 1Van Gogh Museum Ticketfrom $32
- 2Heineken Experience Ticketfrom $28
- 3Rijksmuseum Entry Ticketfrom $31
Private guides, small-group runs to Giethoorn, and the boats you charter instead of share.
Windmills still turn twenty minutes from Amsterdam Centraal.
Zaanse Schans grinds pigment, chalk and mustard the way it always did. Marken keeps its green timber houses on a former island. Kinderdijk lines nineteen mills along one stretch of dyke. All of it is a morning out.
Rotterdam rebuilt itself in glass, steel and cube houses.
Flattened in 1940 and rebuilt with nothing to conserve, it now has a market hall painted on the inside, a skyline the rest of the country does not have, and a working harbour you can only really read from the water. Forty minutes from Amsterdam by train.
- 1Harbor Sightseeing Cruisefrom $22
- 21-Hour Sightseeing Splash Tourfrom $35
- 3Rotterdam Zoo Blijdorp Entry Ticketfrom $32
The canal, the mill and the bike: nowhere else runs on all three.
Museums and food walks exist in every capital. A city laid out on water, a village that still mills mustard by wind, and a country where the bicycle is the traffic belong to this one.
The Canal Ring
Amsterdam has roughly 165 canals and more than a thousand bridges, and the seventeenth-century ring is on the UNESCO list. From the deck you read what the pavement hides: the hoisting beam under every gable, the width of a merchant plot, the facades leaning out over the water on purpose so the furniture clears the windows.
- 1Amsterdam Luxury Canal Cruise + Unlimited Drinks & Bites option★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 30,518 reviews
- 275 Minute City Canal Cruise with Audio Guide★★★★★★★★★★ 4.4 · 17,501 reviews
- 3City Centre Canal Cruise★★★★★★★★★★ 4.2 · 12,827 reviews
The Zaanse Schans Mills
The Zaan was the first industrial district in Europe, powered by more than a thousand windmills. A handful survive at Zaanse Schans and they still grind: pigment for paint, chalk, linseed oil, mustard. You can climb inside while the shaft is turning and feel the whole building working.
- 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 Bicycle
There are more bicycles in the Netherlands than people, and the infrastructure treats them as traffic rather than leisure. A guided ride is the quickest way to stop flinching: you learn the bell, the hand signals and the rule that trams always win, and after that the city is yours.
- 1Guided Bike Tour City Centre in EN/DE/FR/ES★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 4,187 reviews
- 2Countryside Bike Tour from Amsterdam: Cheese, Clogs & a Windmill★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 1,485 reviews
- 3Hidden Gems & Highlights Guided Bike Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 1,404 reviews
Four Dutch bookings that will not wait for your arrival.
Most of the country can be sorted from the hotel the night before. These run on timed ticket releases, a growing season and a festival calendar, none of which care when your flight lands.
- 01Keukenhof Ticket and Roundtrip Shuttle TransferThe gardens open for about eight weeks in spring and are shut the rest of the year. Miss the window and there is nothing to visit.
- 02Van Gogh Museum TicketEntry is by dated time slot sold in advance. There is no ticket window to queue at on the day.
- 03Anne Frank’s Story – Guided Walking Tour through AmsterdamEntry to the house is timed and released weeks ahead, and the guided walks around the Jordaan and the Jewish Quarter fill alongside it.
- 04Light Festival Boat with Unlimited Drinks OptionThe artworks are only in the water from late November to late January. Outside those weeks the boats sail past empty canals.
Dutch rain comes sideways. Book a roof.
Rain does not cancel a canal cruise, because the glass-topped boats were built for exactly this. Nor does the Rijksmuseum, the Van Gogh, a cheese tasting on the Prinsengracht or an hour walking the Jordaan with someone who knows the shortcuts.
Amsterdam changes shift at sunset.
Every evening cruise →Evening Cruise with Optional Wine and Snacks
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Red Light District Tour in German/English/Italian
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Red Light District Pub Crawl with Unlimited Shots
Read our review →By city, and what each one is for
Amsterdam1,429 tours
Rotterdam82 tours
The Hague55 tours
Utrecht20 tours
Haarlem35 tours
Giethoorn83 tours
Maastricht28 tours- All 19 regions →
One Dutch week: four cities and a windmill village.
Amsterdam
Zaanse Schans
Volendam & Marken
RotterdamThe latest reviews, from Amsterdam outwards.
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