The Best Day Trips from Amsterdam

The 9 best day trips, ranked

Ordered by how well they repay a full day - factoring travel time, what you can actually see, and how easy they are without a car.

1. 
   1

   Haarlem

   The easiest escape from the crowds

   20 km west · ~15 min by train

   Haarlem is what people imagine Amsterdam is like before they arrive: gabled houses, a huge market square under the Grote Kerk, canals without the crowds, and the Frans Hals Museum in a converted almshouse. The Teylers Museum is the oldest museum in the country and still lit largely by daylight, which is a strange and lovely thing to stand inside. It is the highest-reward, lowest-effort trip on this list.

   Getting there: Direct trains run from Amsterdam Centraal several times an hour and take about fifteen minutes. It is one of the cheapest fares in the country, a few euros each way, and no booking is needed - turn up and tap in.

2. 
   2

   Zaanse Schans

   Windmills in half a day

   18 km northwest · ~17 min by train, then a 15-min walk

   Working windmills on a green riverbank, wooden houses, a cheese farm and a clog workshop, all within a few hundred metres. It is the postcard, and it delivers the postcard. The honest caveat: this is a curated open-air museum rather than a living village, the buildings were moved here from around the region, and by midday it is very busy with coach groups. Go early, allow two to three hours, and you have seen it properly.

   Getting there: Take the local train from Amsterdam Centraal to Zaandijk Zaanse Schans, about seventeen minutes, then walk roughly fifteen minutes over the river to the site. Entry to the village itself is free; individual windmills and workshops charge separately. The Amsterdam and Region Travel Ticket covers this route.

   confirmation_numberFind Zaanse Schans toursGuided day trips and skip-the-line ticketsarrow_forward

   • check_circleInstant confirmation
   • check_circleFree cancellation on most tours
   • Prices on Trip.com
3. 
   3

   Giethoorn

   Canals without cars

   120 km northeast · ~2 hr each way independently

   A village with canals instead of streets, where almost everything is reached by boat and the footbridges do the rest. It sits on the edge of Weerribben-Wieden, the largest fen in northwest Europe, and the quiet is the point. Two honest warnings: the centre is small and gets swamped between about 11am and 3pm when the coaches land, and the four-hour round trip means this is a full day for one village. Go for the boat, not for a long list of sights.

   Getting there: There is no direct train. Independently it is a train north followed by a local bus, roughly two hours each way, which eats most of the day. Coach day tours from central Amsterdam handle the connection and usually include the canal cruise, which is why most visitors take one.

   confirmation_numberFind Giethoorn toursGuided day trips and skip-the-line ticketsarrow_forward

   • check_circleInstant confirmation
   • check_circleFree cancellation on most tours
   • Prices on Trip.com
4. 4

   Utrecht

   Canals at water level

   40 km southeast · ~30 min by train

   Utrecht has the one thing Amsterdam's canals do not: split-level wharves, where the old cellar quays sit a storey below the street and are now full of terraces at water level. Climb the Dom Tower, the tallest church tower in the country, for the view. It is a university city, so it feels lived-in and student-priced rather than staged for visitors.

   Getting there: Frequent direct intercity trains from Amsterdam Centraal, about thirty minutes. Utrecht Centraal sits under a large shopping centre; walk through it and the old town starts immediately.

5. 
   5

   Rotterdam

   Modern architecture and food

   75 km southwest · ~40 min by train

   Rotterdam was flattened in 1940 and rebuilt as an architectural experiment, so it is the opposite of everywhere else on this list: cube houses, the Markthal's vaulted food market, the Erasmus bridge, and a skyline that actually has skyscrapers. If you have had enough gables and canals, this resets the palate. It is also a genuinely good eating city.

   Getting there: The Intercity Direct from Amsterdam Centraal reaches Rotterdam in about forty minutes. Slower ordinary intercity trains also run the route and take longer for a little less.

6. 
   6

   The Hague

   Vermeer and a beach

   60 km southwest · ~50 min by train

   The Mauritshuis holds Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring and Fabritius's Goldfinch in a compact townhouse you can see properly in ninety minutes, which is a rare thing among great galleries. The government quarter around the Binnenhof is grand and walkable, and Scheveningen puts a long North Sea beach at the end of a tram line. Book the Mauritshuis slot ahead; it is small and it sells out.

   Getting there: Direct intercity trains from Amsterdam Centraal, about fifty minutes to Den Haag Centraal. Trams run from the station out to the beach at Scheveningen.

7. 
   7

   Delft

   Vermeer's town, in an afternoon

   70 km southwest · ~60 min by train

   A small, tidy canal town that was Vermeer's home and gave its name to the blue-and-white pottery. The market square between the Nieuwe Kerk and the town hall is one of the best in the country, and the Royal Delft factory still paints by hand. It is compact enough to see in an afternoon, which makes it an easy pairing with The Hague on the same ticket.

   Getting there: Direct trains from Amsterdam Centraal take about an hour. The station is a short walk from the old centre.

8. 
   8

   Marken and Volendam

   Old fishing villages by bus and boat

   20 km northeast · ~35-45 min by bus

   Two former fishing villages on the old Zuiderzee: Volendam with its harbourfront and eel smokehouses, Marken a quieter cluster of dark timber houses on what was once an island. Doing both with the ferry between them makes a satisfying half-day loop. Be clear-eyed about it - Volendam leans hard into costumes-and-photos tourism, and Marken is the more honest half of the pair.

   Getting there: Regional buses run from behind Amsterdam Centraal to both villages, and a seasonal passenger ferry connects the two across the Markermeer. Both are covered by the Amsterdam and Region Travel Ticket, which makes the loop good value.

   confirmation_numberFind Marken and Volendam toursGuided day trips and skip-the-line ticketsarrow_forward

   • check_circleInstant confirmation
   • check_circleFree cancellation on most tours
   • Prices on Trip.com
9. 9

   Keukenhof

   Tulips, if your dates line up

   40 km southwest · ~1 hr by bus, spring only

   Seven million bulbs planted in a park, which is exactly as absurd and as impressive as it sounds. The critical caveat is that Keukenhof opens for only about eight weeks in spring and is shut the rest of the year, so check the current dates before you build a trip around it. Outside those weeks the bulb fields around Lisse can still be seen from a bike or a train window, free.

   Getting there: Combination tickets pairing the bus from Schiphol or Amsterdam with garden entry are the standard way in, and they sell out on spring weekends. There is no train to the gardens themselves.

   confirmation_numberFind Keukenhof toursGuided day trips and skip-the-line ticketsarrow_forward

   • check_circleInstant confirmation
   • check_circleFree cancellation on most tours
   • Prices on Trip.com

Day trips from other cities