AMSTERDAM · NETHERLANDS
Green canals, gabled houses, a bike for every bridge.
Canal cruises through the Golden-Age ring, the Van Gogh and the Rijksmuseum, cheese and pancakes by bike, and day trips out to the windmills, the tulip fields and Bruges.
Only here
Amsterdam, and nowhere else.
Boat tours and art museums turn up in every city. The 17th-century canal ring, Van Gogh in his own museum and the house where Anne Frank hid belong to Amsterdam alone.
Golden-Age water
The Canal Ring by Boat
Amsterdam dug its ring of concentric canals in the 17th century, and the grachtengordel is now a UNESCO World Heritage site. Gabled merchant houses, humpback bridges and houseboats line the water, and the only way to read the plan of the city is from a boat down the middle of it.
- 1 Amsterdam Classic Saloon Boat Cruise with Drinks and Cheese
- 2 Amsterdam Luxury Canal Cruise + Unlimited Drinks & Bites option
- 3 Amsterdam: Open Boat Cruise option Unlimited Drinks & Bite
Two hundred canvases
Van Gogh's Own Museum
No other city holds Van Gogh like this. The museum on the Museumplein keeps the largest collection of his work anywhere, more than two hundred paintings plus the letters, tracing the line from the dark Potato Eaters to the blazing late wheatfields. Timed entry only, and the slots go fast.
- 1 Amsterdam: Van Gogh Museum Ticket and City Canal Cruise
- 2 Amsterdam: Van Gogh Museum Ticket & Canal Cruise
- 3 Van Gogh Museum Amsterdam Exclusive Tour w/ Reserved Entry
The Secret Annexe
Anne Frank's House
On the Prinsengracht stands the canal house where Anne Frank and her family hid for two years, and where she wrote the diary. You climb behind the hinged bookcase into the rooms themselves. There is nothing else like it, and it exists only here.
- 1 Anne Frank’s Story – Guided Walking Tour through Amsterdam
- 2 Amsterdam: Life of Anne Frank and World War II Walking Tour
- 3 Amsterdam: Anne Frank Guided Small Group Walking Tour
Start on the water
The one almost everyone books first.
If you do a single thing in Amsterdam, it is a cruise through the canal ring. More visitors start their trip here than with anything else.
The classics
Amsterdam's Most Popular Tours
Canal cruises, the Rijksmuseum, the Heineken Experience and the windmills at Zaanse Schans. The days most visitors come for.
Where to begin
The days an Amsterdam trip is built around.
The canal cruise, the great museums, the windmills, the tulip fields, the cheese and the bikes. The handful of days most trips plan around, and the best way to do each.
The big decision
Which canal cruise?
There are more boats on the canals than you can count, and they are not the same trip. Here is how to pick, by the time of day you have and the mood you are in.
Late November to January
When the canals light up.
Through the dark of winter the Light Festival strings illuminated artworks the length of the water, and the way to see them is from a heated boat gliding underneath. Mulled wine in hand, the gabled houses doubled in the canal, the city at its most magic in the cold.
Read the guide: the best light-festival cruises →Gouda & Edam
A country that runs on cheese.
The Dutch eat more cheese per head than almost anyone, and the famous names are towns you can visit: Gouda, Edam, Alkmaar. Tastings in the old canal-house shops, farm visits out in the polder, and a wheel to carry home wrapped in wax.
See the best cheese tastings →On two wheels
More bikes than people.
Amsterdam keeps more bicycles than residents, and the whole flat city is built around them. Guided rides roll past the canal ring, the Vondelpark and the Jordaan, or push out beyond the ring road to the windmills, the river Amstel and the polder villages.
Cycling & e-bike tours →Day trip
Windmills, clogs and the working past.
Half an hour north, Zaanse Schans keeps a row of working windmills along the river Zaan, with clog-makers, cheese farms and the green timber houses of the old Zaanstreek. Most trips fold in the fishing villages of Volendam and Marken on the IJsselmeer.
- 1 From Amsterdam: Zaanse Schans, Volendam, and Marken Day Trip
- 2 Amsterdam: Zaanse Schans, Edam, Volendam & Marken Bus Tour
- 3 Day Trip to Zaanse Schans, Edam, Volendam and Marken from Amsterdam
Morning to midnight
An Amsterdam day, three ways.
The city runs at whatever pace you set. A quiet gallery morning, an afternoon out on a bike, and a last boat under the lights once the sun is down.
Slow mornings
Coffee, canals, old masters.The Rijksmuseum or the Van Gogh before the crowds arrive, then a slow boat through the canal ring to read the city.
Afternoons out
On a bike, into the green.Cycle the canal belt and the Vondelpark, sit down to a cheese tasting, or ride out to the windmills and the polder villages.
After dark
The city stays up late.The Light Festival from a heated boat, a brown-cafe crawl through the Jordaan, and the old town with a guide who knows its corners.
Spring only
Seven million bulbs, eight weeks a year.
From late March to mid-May the bulb fields south of the city run in stripes of red and yellow to the horizon, and Keukenhof opens its gates as the largest flower garden on earth. Day trips run from the centre for the few weeks the tulips are out, and not a day longer.
See all 56 tulip day trips →By place
Amsterdam, and the days around it.
Amsterdam for the canals and the art. Zaanse Schans for the windmills. Keukenhof for the tulips. Giethoorn for the water village. Bruges for medieval Flanders. Rotterdam and The Hague for Vermeer and bold modern lines.
By activity
Pick your kind of day.
A boat if you want the canals. A bike if you want to cover ground. A museum for a grey afternoon. Cheese, a food tour, or the old city after dark.
Plan it
Three perfect days.
Never been? Here is a long weekend that hits the essentials without a wasted hour.
Just added