Amsterdam fits in a weekend. Booking it badly costs you a day.
Which canal boat has a roof and which has an open bar. Whether the Van Gogh sells out before you land. How long the polder villages really take. Reviews of every tour you can book in Amsterdam and the Dutch cities around it.
A canal boat, a Rijksmuseum ticket, the polder villages, the Anne Frank walk.
The four bookings a first Amsterdam trip is built on. What each costs and what the people who took it say.
01The one that sells outVan Gogh Museum TicketTimed entry to the Van Gogh Museum. Slots go weeks ahead in summer and there is no door queue to join instead.
02The first eveningAmsterdam Classic Saloon Boat Cruise with Drinks and CheeseA saloon boat through the ring with drinks and cheese on the table. Sit on the canal rather than beside it.
03The day outZaanse Schans, Volendam, and Marken Day TripZaanse Schans, Volendam and Marken in one loop. Windmills, a working harbour and the drive across the polder between them.
04The morning walkAnne Frank’s Story – Guided Walking Tour through AmsterdamThe Jordaan and the Prinsengracht on foot, told through the years the Frank family spent hidden there.
Three kinds of canal boat, and the gap between them is bigger than the price.
Nearly every visitor takes a boat, and most take the wrong one. An audio-guide hour is a sightseeing trip. An open-bar boat is an evening. The December light-festival run is neither. Pick the deck first, then the operator.
★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · Amsterdam Classic Saloon Boat Cruise with Drinks and Cheese
The audio-guide hourGlass roof, headphones, the Golden Age houses explained as you pass them.
Open bar on deckBar on board, no commentary, usually a bite. An evening rather than a tour.
Winter light runsDecember and January only, when the artworks are strung over the water.
All 259 boat trips in Amsterdam →
Amsterdam keeps more painting per square mile than anywhere in Europe.
The Rijksmuseum and the Van Gogh sit two hundred metres apart on the same lawn, the Rembrandt house is a canal walk away, and the queue for all of them is the same queue. Entry is timed. Buy the slot before you book the flight home.
The tickets Amsterdam runs out of.
Every tour we have reviewed here →More travellers book these than anything else in the city, and what earns each one the slot.
1
Van Gogh Museum Ticket
See Van Gogh’s greatest paintings, drawings, and letters at Amsterdam’s timed-entry museum, with optional audio guides and flexible cancellation.
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
The polder starts fifteen minutes past the ring road.
The Netherlands is small enough that the countryside is a commute. Fishing harbours on the old Zuiderzee, a village with canals instead of streets and no cars at all, cheese towns that still weigh their wheels in the square. Half of these are back in Amsterdam by mid-afternoon.
- 1Zaanse Schans, Volendam, and Marken Day Tripfrom $43
- 2Zaanse Schans, Edam, Volendam & Marken Bus Tourfrom $32
- 3Day Trip to Zaanse Schans, Edam, Volendam and Marken from Amsterdamfrom $45
Amsterdam first. Then whichever Dutch city the train reaches in an hour.
The ring of canals and everything under it, a rebuilt port city an hour south, the court town with the Vermeers, a cathedral and a wharf-level canal in Utrecht, and the small places most people never leave the capital for.
What a day out in Amsterdam actually costs.
Every tour on the site, grouped by price. Most of what people come to Amsterdam for costs less than the hotel breakfast.
Museum entry, the canal hour, the walking tours and the bike hire that gets you out of the centre.
Full days to Zaanse Schans and Giethoorn, small-group food walks, the Keukenhof run in tulip season.
Private guides, chartered boats and the day trips that reach Bruges and back.
Three things the Netherlands does that nowhere else bothers with.
Old towns and good galleries exist all over Europe. A village of working windmills on a river bend, a hundred acres planted for seven weeks a year, and a man who still turns clogs on a lathe do not.
The Windmills at Zaanse Schans
Six working mills stand on a bend of the Zaan twenty minutes north of Centraal, grinding pigment, sawing timber and pressing oil the way the whole district did when there were six hundred of them. The green houses were moved here plank by plank from villages that were being cleared. Go on the first bus: by eleven the path along the dyke is a queue.
- 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 Keukenhof Bulb Fields
Seven million bulbs go into the ground each autumn at Lisse so the park can open from late March to mid-May and then shut completely. The beds are replanted every year, which is why the display never repeats. The gardens are twenty-five miles from the city and the shuttle is the whole logistics problem: book the coach and the ticket together.
- 1Keukenhof Ticket and Roundtrip Shuttle Transfer★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 11,799 reviews
- 2Tour to Keukenhof Gardens with Windmill Cruise★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 2,819 reviews
- 3Day Tour Keukenhof and Zaanse Schans Windmills★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 1,549 reviews
Clogs, Cheese and the Farm Yards
A clog is turned from a single block of poplar in about five minutes, and the workshops on the Zaan still demonstrate it on the original lathes. Next door the cheese is racked in wheels by age. Neither is theatre invented for visitors — both are farm trades that outlived the farms and stayed where they were.
- 1Amsterdam Classic Saloon Boat Cruise with Drinks and Cheese★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 31,825 reviews
- 2Classic Boat Cruise with Optional Cheese & Wine★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · 22,925 reviews
- 3Guided Zaanse Schans, Windmills & Cheese Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.4 · 4,826 reviews
Four Amsterdam bookings that will not wait until you land.
Most of this city can be arranged over breakfast. These four run on timed entry slots, a seven-week flowering season and a house that admits a fixed number of people an hour.
- 01Van Gogh Museum TicketEntry is timed and capped. In summer the slots are gone weeks out, and there is no ticket window at the door to fall back on.
- 02Anne Frank’s Story – Guided Walking Tour through AmsterdamThe house admits a set number each hour and releases tickets on a fixed schedule. The guided walks around it are what is left when they go.
- 03Keukenhof Ticket and Roundtrip Shuttle TransferThe gardens open for roughly seven weeks in spring and then close for the year. The shuttle seats go before the tickets do.
- 04Rijksmuseum Entry TicketTimed entry again, and the Night Watch hall is busiest between eleven and three. An early slot is a different museum.
It rains on Amsterdam roughly one day in three. Plan for it, not around it.
A wet afternoon here is not a lost one — the city is built at walking distance and almost everything worth doing has a roof. Brewery floors, gallery halls, a covered boat, a kitchen. Keep the bike day for the sun and move these indoors when the sky closes in.
- 1Van Gogh Museum Ticketfrom $32
- 2Heineken Experience Ticketfrom $28
- 3Moco Museum Amsterdam Entrance Tickets with Banksy & Morefrom $18
By place — the capital and the cities around it
By kind of day — boat, gallery, saddle or dyke road
Museumplein, the ring, the Jordaan, then the polder: the run that works.
The Jordaan
Amsterdam OostThe newest Amsterdam tour reviews.
The rest of the new ones →
Amsterdam Canal Cruise in Classic Salon Boat With Drinks and Cheese
Read our review →
Historical Walking Tour, private with local Dutch guide
Read our review →
Giethoorn Day Trip from Amsterdam With Cruise and Cheeseplatter
Read our review →
e-Scavenger hunt Zwolle: Explore the city at your own pace
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Giethoorn, Private Boat Tour & Exploring the North Netherlands
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