Escorted Netherlands Holidays and Guided Tours
The Netherlands suits this way of travelling: short distances, flat well-made roads, and a great deal packed into a small country. In a few days you can walk the tulip beds at Keukenhof in the morning and stand in front of Rembrandt's Night Watch the same afternoon.
Our Dutch holidays lean towards gardens and galleries, with a Christmas departure or two when Amsterdam is at its most atmospheric. Some travel by coach and ferry, others by Eurostar, by air, or by river cruise along the canals. Amsterdam has its own page if you want the city in more detail.
Frequently Asked Questions About Our Netherlands Tours
Keukenhof and the tulip season
Keukenhof, on the old estate lands at Lisse between Leiden and Haarlem, plants around seven million bulbs each autumn for a season that lasts barely eight weeks. Some 800 varieties of tulip appear, along with hyacinths, narcissi and the flower shows held in the pavilions. It opens in late March and closes in the middle of May, which is why our garden tours cluster tightly in spring.
The commercial bulb fields around the gardens are a separate spectacle, and their timing does not always match Keukenhof's. Mid-April is usually the safest bet for both, though a warm March can bring everything forward.
Our Keukenhof holidays pair the gardens with the rest of Dutch spring: a whisperboat through the canals, the model gardens at Bloemenpark Appeltern, a cheese farm and clog factory, and the windmills at Zaanse Schans. The river cruise version adds Rotterdam, Amsterdam and Volendam from the water.
Dutch art and the Golden Age
For a country this size, the collections are remarkable. The Rijksmuseum holds the Rembrandts and the Vermeers; the Van Gogh Museum a few minutes' walk away has the largest single gathering of his work. The Frans Hals Museum in Haarlem sits in the painter's own town, where his loose, quick brushwork looks less like the seventeenth century than it has any right to.
Beyond Amsterdam, our art tours take in the Kröller-Müller Museum, set in the woods and heathland of the Hoge Veluwe National Park with its own substantial Van Gogh holdings, and the Vincentre at Nuenen, where he lived with his parents and painted The Potato Eaters.
Where we can arrange a guided tour inside a museum rather than leaving you with an audio handset, we do. It makes a real difference in a building the size of the Rijksmuseum.
