Tulips from Amsterdam - tips for visiting

[BellissimoGecko]

Hi! We want to go and see the tulips in Holland next spring, but where is the best place to go? There seem to be tulips in various places across Holland.

Should we go to Keukenhof gardens or to an area where there are tulip fields?

Any recommendations would be great 🙏

Me and my best friend went in 2023 and did a city break to Amsterdam specifically to see the tulips. It was totally amazing!! We booked this tour through Tiqets. All very smooth and easy. Tour was called -
Keukenhof: Entrance + Roundtrip Shuttle Bus from Amsterdam & Windmill Cruise
there are so many tulips all around Amsterdam and we especially liked the area near the Van Gogh Museum. We went the 15 April and everything was a picture.
My one tip though. If you want to go the Anne Frank museum and the Van Gogh museum whilst you’re there, must book a lot in advance.

Definitely go to Keukenhof. It is a world-class tourist attraction its own right. The best time for maximum tulips is the second or third week of April. You can get a round-trip (bus plus park entry) ticket from Schiphol or central Amsterdam — we went this year and that cost €32 per person. The park entrance is about €20, so the bus was good value on top.

We stayed at the Ramada airport hotel, which is on the edge of the small town of Badhoevedorp. There are enough restaurants for 2-3 days and you can get the hotel's shuttle bus to Schiphol to pick up the bus to Keukenhof. The hotel has nice big modern rooms and a pool, and we found it to be amazing value compared to staying in Amsterdam itself, where the hotels are at London prices. You can also get the bus or Uber into Amsterdam if you want to do more than just look at the flowers. We had two full days, and we know Amsterdam well already, so we did Keukenhof on one day and went to the coast (Zandvoort) on the other.

Keukenhof is amazing - but incredibly busy (well it was the day we went earlier this year, though it was a weekend so maybe mid week is quieter) We did similar to @Summersongroses and did a trip from the city centre that included a boat trip as well.

Planning trip next year. Looking for recommendations of a reasonably priced hotel near Centraal station please.

Keukenhof is the place to go - midweek is quieter than the weekends but any day there, particularly a sunny Spring day, is a treat.

Maybe stay in Leiden vs Amsterdam - it's closer to the bulb fields and is a lovely town in it's own right, windmill, canals etc. 30 mins on train to Adam. Buses go to Keukenhof. We went there last year after years of saying we would go, but did it as a bus tour from Brussels with a stop off in Delft. It was a lovely day, but we went "peak bloom" early May I think and it was heaving! Definitely glad we did it though. I would take a packed lunch maybe as I thought the catering was hugely expensive, and lots of queues. It is surrounded by the tulip fields.

We did the trip by car. Stayed in another city rather than Amsterdam, for a quarter of the price.
Keukenhof was amazing. The bulb fields around it too, something I'd wanted to see from being a child. There is a bulb field you can see from the edge of Keukenhof but as we had the car we could tour more.

I was a bit worried about timing the bulbs being in flower but there is a lot of info out there. We didn't have any flexibility due to being a teacher and had to wait until a year when Easter break was later and at the right time for the bulbs!

Check ‘secretescapes’ as they often have Amsterdam. Read reviews before booking though.

If you want Amsterdam rather than another city (cheaper) one idea is to stay in a hotel in Amsterdam Noord. A quick, free, frequent ferry ride from the rear of central station. Really easy.
Hotels are often good value.

The area is quite industrial with media museums, street art, a tap room, large industrial style restaurants (one with a beach area) and a graffiti museum.

Amsterdam is incredibly well served by train. There are a lot of small cities short train journeys away like Den Haag, Leiden, Haarlem, Utrecht, Delft that are lovely and interesting to stay in and much much cheaper than Amsterdam.

Even staying at Schipol would give you easy trips to Keukenhof and the city centre.

Thanks for suggestion of looking across the water. Anywhere in particular? Hotels look £££ mid April! We are taking Eurostar and note the bus to Keukenhof leaves from outside Centraal station too.