Off-The Beaten-Track Tulips Tour

From Amsterdam

4 tourists smiling in a flower field near Amsterdam

Off-The Beaten-Track Tulips Tour

From Amsterdam

Our off-the-beaten-track tour whisks you down backroads and away from all tourist cliches. This means we avoid Keukenhof, its crowds and traffic!

The highlight, as you’d expect, is a visit to a completely private tulips farm. This is quite rare! The tulip farmers are friends of ours and they give us the full run of their tulip fields!…. And look, we can’t really be modest about this: This is also the tulips farm that we brought Barack Obama to in Spring 2023!

We also travel the backroads just to the north of Amsterdam, which gives a rich peek into Dutch culture and history. There is also a photo op at a windmill, an artisan picnic lunch (tipple of beer or wine included), a stop at a beautiful Golden Age town, and many dikes and polders! All in all, this is a rich and authentic Dutch day out, where tulips are the star!

Tour Highlights

Detailed Tour Description

We begin our tour driving the back country roads of Waterland. This is the countryside just to the north of Amsterdam and it gives you a rich peek into authentic life. We’ll skirt the edge of the largest lake in Western Europe, where your guide will explain the eternal Dutch battle with water. We’ll then make our via over dikes, through polders, and past a tiny rural village.

Dikes, Polders, & The Dutch Countryside

Up next is the Golden Age town of Monnickendam, where your guide will pick up a very special home made apple pie (for later consumption of course!). You’ll get a little glimpse of this beautiful unspoiled town, with its houses from the 1600s and picturesque harbour.

Onwards to the Beemster Polder, which is a Unesco World Herigitage Site. You will stop at a working windmill from the 1600s, where your guide will explain all about these quintessentially Dutch contraptions. You’ll have a chance to grab a photo here, but please note we won’t go into the windmill itself .

 

Private Tulips Farm & Picnic

And then, tulips! We’ll take on a leisurely drive through the Beemster area, which will give you a great over-all view of this tulip fields area. Finally, we visit Betsie’s tulips farm which we’ve been visiting since 2015. It’s a completely private tulips farm, and receives no other tour groups. Because of this we’ll have her tulips field all to ourselves. Here, your guide will tell the story of Dutch tulips!

We round out the tour with a lovely picnic. Because it features a proper Dutch cheese sandwich (optional ham), a thick slice of homemade Dutch apple pie, and a bottle of beer or glass of wine (or water or apple juice), you’ll feel well fed and a bit more Dutch.

And then back to Amsterdam!

Please note: For the earlier tours we may also stop at a field of hyacinths. There are usually some tulips to be seen in early to mid April, but the fields may not be at their peak. However, there are also hyacinth fields which bloom a bit earlier. In the early tours we often visit both.

To view pictures from our 2023 season please click here.

Sheep on a road near Amsterdam
A group of American tourists in a field of tulips near Amsterdam
Sheep on a road near Amsterdam
A group of American tourists in a field of tulips near Amsterdam