Half of Amsterdam is best seen from a boat. The other half sold out weeks ago.
Which canal cruise really includes the drinks. What the Zaanse Schans coach costs once you add the cheese farm. Whether Anne Frank tickets are gone before you land. Reviews of every tour and ticket you can book in Amsterdam.
A boat, a windmill village, a museum slot and one difficult morning.
The four bookings a first Amsterdam trip is built around. What each costs, and which one to reserve before you do anything else.
01The first eveningAmsterdam Classic Saloon Boat Cruise with Drinks and CheeseA covered saloon boat through the ring with wine and a plate of Gouda. The cheapest hour in the city that still feels like an occasion.
02The day out of townZaanse Schans, Volendam, and Marken Day TripWorking windmills at Zaanse Schans, then the fishing harbours at Volendam and Marken. One bus, three postcards.
03The queue you skipRijksmuseum Entry TicketRembrandt, Vermeer and the Night Watch on a timed entry ticket. Book the first slot and you get the gallery to yourself for twenty minutes.
04The difficult morningAnne Frank’s Story – Guided Walking Tour through AmsterdamThe Jordaan on foot, ending at the annexe on the Prinsengracht. Guides fill the gap left by a house that allows no talking inside.
Every good Amsterdam evening starts at a jetty on the Herengracht.
One hundred and sixty five canals, fifteen hundred bridges and a boat for every mood. Four kinds of sailing, what it costs to step aboard each one, and which part of the evening it suits.
★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · Amsterdam Luxury Canal Cruise + Unlimited Drinks & Bites option
The classic cruiseNinety minutes through the ring, glass roof, audio guide.
Open boat, drinks inUnlimited beer and wine, low bridges, nobody lecturing.
Your own skipperA small boat, your own route, a dozen people at most.
Light Festival sailingsDecember to January, when the art is installed on the water.
All 109 cruises on the canals →
The windmills, the cheese and the tulips are all a bus ride from Centraal.
Zaanse Schans is twenty minutes north and still smells of sawdust and cocoa. Volendam and Marken are the old fishing harbours past it. Giethoorn has canals where the streets should be, and for eight weeks each spring Keukenhof turns a field near Lisse into seven million bulbs.
Amsterdam is small enough to cross on foot and flat enough to cross faster on a bike.
The ring of canals, the working windmills north of it, two of the best museums in Europe, a cheese counter, and a lane the city has argued about for four hundred years. Six starting points, and the best day out in each.
What everyone in Amsterdam is actually booking.
Every Amsterdam review →The tours and tickets more travellers take than anything else in the city, and what each one gets right.
1
Amsterdam Classic Saloon Boat Cruise with Drinks and Cheese
Spend an hour on Amsterdam’s UNESCO-listed Canal Ring aboard a classic covered wooden boat. An onboard host such as Sofia, Noa, Jessie, or Albert shares local stories as you pass the Anne Frank House, Rijksmuseum, Jordaan, Skinny Bridge, and more. Choose the drinks and Dutch cheese option when booking.
From · $21
Read our review →
2
Amsterdam Luxury Canal Cruise + Unlimited Drinks & Bites option
from $18
3
Heineken Experience Ticket
from $28
4
Rijksmuseum Entry Ticket
from $31
5
Classic Boat Cruise with Optional Cheese & Wine
from $18
6
Evening Cruise with Optional Wine and Snacks
from $22
7
Amsterdam All-Inclusive 90-Minutes Heated Cruise by Captain Jack
from $27
8
Zaanse Schans, Volendam, and Marken Day Trip
from $43
Three things this city has that nowhere else can copy.
Old towns and good galleries exist all over Europe. A ring of merchant canals dug by hand, two hundred Van Goghs under one roof, and a hill of working sawmills do not.
The Canal Ring
Herengracht, Keizersgracht and Prinsengracht were cut in half circles around the medieval town when Amsterdam ran out of room for warehouses. The merchant houses lean forward on purpose, so the hoisting beam under the gable can lift a piano past the windows without scraping the brick. The whole ring has been a World Heritage site since 2010, and the water is still the only place you can see all of it at once.
- 1Amsterdam Luxury Canal Cruise + Unlimited Drinks & Bites option★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 30,518 reviews
- 2City Centre Canal Cruise★★★★★★★★★★ 4.2 · 12,827 reviews
- 3Amsterdam Canal Cruise in Open Boat with Unlimited Drinks Option★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 4,976 reviews
The Van Gogh Museum
His brother Theo died six months after he did, and the paintings stayed in the family for three generations before the state built a museum around them. It holds roughly two hundred canvases and five hundred drawings, hung in the order he painted them, so you walk from the brown potato eaters of Nuenen into the yellow of Arles in about forty minutes. Nothing else comes close to the run.
- 1Van Gogh Museum Ticket and City Canal Cruise★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · 3,899 reviews
- 2Van Gogh Museum Amsterdam Exclusive Tour w/ Reserved Entry★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 1,760 reviews
- 3Van Gogh Museum Tour Reserved Entry Semi Private★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 1,437 reviews
The Zaan Windmills
The Zaan district ran on more than a thousand windmills, sawing timber for the shipyards and grinding chalk, mustard and cocoa. A handful were dragged to one riverbank at Zaanse Schans and still work: you climb the ladder inside, stand under the turning stones and get shouted at by nobody, because the mills are loud enough to do it themselves.
- 1Guided Zaanse Schans, Windmills & Cheese Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.4 · 4,826 reviews
- 2Windmill Tour from Amsterdam, Including Volendam & Marken★★★★★★★★★★ 4.0 · 4,572 reviews
- 3Zaanse Schans Windmills, Clogs and Dutch Cheese Small-Group Tour from Amsterdam★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 2,369 reviews
The Museumplein queue is the one Amsterdam problem you can plan away.
Van Gogh and the Rijksmuseum both run on timed entry and both fill in high season. Anne Frank House releases its slots six weeks ahead and they are gone in minutes. The brewery, the wax museum and the ice bar are the easy ones, and they stay easy.
Every Amsterdam ticket →
Amsterdam by price: fifteen dollars to your own skipper.
Every tour and ticket on the site, grouped by what you actually pay. An hour on the canal ring costs less than lunch beside it.
Canal cruises, museum entry, walking tours, the brewery and most of what happens inside the ring.
Whole days out: the windmill villages, Giethoorn, Keukenhof in season, small-group rides and food walks.
A private boat with a skipper, a guide to yourself, and the long runs south into Belgium.
In Amsterdam a bicycle is not an activity. It is the traffic.
There are more bikes here than people, a lane on nearly every street and not a hill in sight. Guided rides go where locals go: out through the Jordaan, south along the Amstel, a loop of the Vondelpark, or onto the free ferry behind Centraal and north into the polder.
- 1Guided Bike Tour City Centre in EN/DE/FR/ESfrom $41
- 2Countryside Bike Tour from Amsterdam: Cheese, Clogs & a Windmillfrom $59
- 3Hidden Gems & Highlights Guided Bike Tourfrom $44
Amsterdam gets rain one day in three, and the wind takes your umbrella.
The North Sea weather arrives flat and horizontal off the IJ, which is why so much of this city is designed to be enjoyed from inside. A glass-roofed boat still shows you the whole ring. A brewery, a cheese counter, a wax museum and a room of projected paintings will all take a wet afternoon off your hands.
Four Amsterdam bookings that will not wait for you.
Most of this city can be sorted from a cafe table on the morning. These four run on release dates, half-hour slots and a season that lasts eight weeks, and none of them care what time your flight lands.
- 01Anne Frank’s Story – Guided Walking Tour through AmsterdamThe house releases its timed tickets six weeks ahead, on the hour, and the day you want is gone within minutes of going live.
- 02Van Gogh Museum Ticket and City Canal CruiseEntry is timed to the half hour and each slot is capped. Weekend afternoons close first, often days out.
- 03Keukenhof Ticket and Roundtrip Shuttle TransferThe gardens open for roughly eight weeks in spring and are shut the rest of the year. There is no arriving late for the tulips.
- 04Light Festival Boat with Unlimited Drinks OptionThe route is only lit from the end of November to the middle of January, and every dry evening in that window fills.
Amsterdam eats standing up, and it is better than its reputation.
A wheel of aged Gouda cut at the counter, a stroopwafel pressed while you wait and handed over too hot, chips under far too much mayonnaise, and a tasting house pouring jenever from a stone bottle you bend down to sip.
A first Amsterdam trip: the water, then the paintings, then the villages.
Museumplein
The Jordaan
On a bike
Zaanse SchansOut of town — where the buses go
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