Netherlands Tours with Flights from €1,664

Nearly every Netherlands trip runs through Amsterdam, and most of the river cruises cast off there, so this is where your days will centre. Two full ones cover the core nicely: a half-day on the canals (the UNESCO-listed ring is best seen from a boat, then walked), the Rijksmuseum for Rembrandt and Vermeer, the Van Gogh Museum right next door, and the Anne Frank House — book that one weeks ahead, because timed tickets vanish and there is no walk-up queue worth joining.

Beyond the headline museums, Amsterdam is a city for aimless wandering. The Jordaan, the Nine Streets shopping lanes, a slow cycle along the Vondelpark — these are the bits people come home talking about. It is compact and flat, which is exactly why guided walking and cycling tours feel so natural here: you cover a lot of ground without ever boarding a coach.

If you want to stay put, Cosmos runs a genuine 7-day "Best of the Netherlands" at around €1,591 land-only, basing out of Amsterdam and day-tripping into the wider country. It is one of the rare trips that treats the Netherlands as the whole point rather than a single stop on a longer route.

If there is one reason to pin a Netherlands trip to a particular fortnight, it is the tulips. The Netherlands sits in the northern hemisphere, so spring falls March-May the way it does across North America and Europe — and if you're travelling up from Australia, that means the tulip season lands squarely in your autumn. Keukenhof — the bulb garden near Lisse, between Amsterdam and The Hague — throws open its gates for roughly eight weeks each spring, typically late March to mid-May, with peak bloom usually landing in the second and third weeks of April. The surrounding bulb fields, the Bollenstreek, dissolve into broad ribbons of red, yellow and pink that you catch from the train window and the drive in.

One honest caveat: we don't carry per-departure dates, so we can't promise a given tour hits peak bloom on the nose. Treat April as the sweet spot rather than a guarantee, and if the tulips are the whole reason you're going, confirm the exact departure with the operator before you book the flight.

Keukenhof gets busy. Weekends in mid-April are the most crowded slot in the entire Dutch tourist year, so a weekday visit and an early start pay off handsomely. Many Amsterdam-based tours bolt on a half-day Keukenhof excursion in season; outside that eight-week window the garden shuts entirely, so there's no sense timing a summer or autumn trip around it.

More trips here are river cruises than anything else, and most of them cast off from Amsterdam, which is precisely why the flight bundle fits this kind of holiday so neatly. You fly into Schiphol, spend a night or two in the city, then board a ship that works the Rhine south through Cologne and the Middle Rhine gorge, or threads the Dutch and Belgian waterways on a shorter loop. Lueftner Cruises and A-ROSA are the names you'll see most often.

Crucemundo's 8-day "UNDISCOVERED NETHERLANDS, Cologne-Amsterdam-Cologne" aboard the MS Vista Rio is a lovely example at around €2,009: a round-trip from Cologne that lingers properly in the Dutch ports rather than ticking Amsterdam off in a single overnight. River cruises bundle in a way coach tours never do — meals, most excursions and the floating hotel all rolled into one — which is why the middle of the range sits higher, around €2,342, and the plush end sails past €3,100.

The booking upshot is a gift: because the ship usually leaves from Amsterdam, your flight target couldn't be simpler — Schiphol, return. No awkward open-jaw to engineer, which keeps the bundled price clean and easy to read.

Small and flat, the Netherlands keeps its out-of-town treats close and easy. Kinderdijk, a UNESCO site near Rotterdam, is the postcard windmill landscape — nineteen 18th-century mills strung along the dykes, an easy half-day from Amsterdam or Rotterdam. Zaanse Schans is the convenient cousin, much nearer the city: working windmills, clog and cheese demonstrations, a 40-minute hop from Amsterdam Centraal. Fold in Delft for the blue pottery and Vermeer, The Hague for the Mauritshuis, and Rotterdam for its bold modern skyline, and you've a full week without ever leaving the country.

Most trips, though, wrap the Netherlands into a wider loop. Globus runs a 9-day "Holland, Luxembourg & Belgium" at around €2,667 — the natural Low-Countries triangle, adding Bruges and Brussels and the old town of Luxembourg City. Step wider still and Expat Explore Travel's 12-day "Europe Escape" at around €3,284 uses Amsterdam as one anchor in a multi-country dash. Expat Explore and Contiki own this younger, faster, border-hopping end of things.

So pick your shape honestly: stay inside the Netherlands for canals, tulips and windmills, board a river cruise for the Rhine, or embrace a Low-Countries loop if you want Bruges and Luxembourg in the same trip.

There is really only one airport that matters: Amsterdam Schiphol (AMS). As one of the world's great hubs, it's good news for the bundle — flights are cheap, frequent and direct from a long list of cities on several continents, so the flight slice of your total is usually the smallest and most predictable part.

From the US, Schiphol is one of the most heavily served European gateways there is, helped by KLM and Delta's joint network. Nonstops fly in from New York (JFK/EWR), Boston, Washington, Atlanta, Detroit, Minneapolis, Chicago, Houston, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Seattle, with the East Coast just 7-8 hours out and the West Coast 10-11. Off-peak return fares land around US$500-$850, climbing to US$900-$1,400 around the April tulip peak and through summer.

From Australia, expect 22-25 hours via a Gulf hub (Qatar, Emirates, Etihad) or an Asian one (Singapore, Bangkok) into Amsterdam, with fares around A$1,800-$3,100 depending on season. A short Netherlands trip is a long way to fly on its own, so many Australians pair it with the Low-Countries or wider-Europe loops the tours already build.

From Canada, KLM and Air Canada fly direct to Amsterdam from Toronto, Montreal and (seasonally) Calgary and Vancouver; reckon on 7-8 hours from the east and C$700-$1,250 return off-peak, more around the tulip peak.

From the UK and Europe, low-cost carriers (Ryanair, easyJet, Transavia, Vueling) typically run €40-€120 return in the shoulder seasons, climbing to €150-€250 around April and through summer, with a flight time of just 1-1.5 hours from the UK. Full-service options (Aer Lingus, British Airways, Air France, KLM, Lufthansa) sit at €130-€280 in the shoulders and €300-€450 at peak, with a checked bag thrown in.

Because most Netherlands tours and river cruises both begin and end in Amsterdam, you'll almost always want a simple return into AMS rather than an open-jaw — one of the tidiest bundles you'll find anywhere on the site. Schiphol is a 15-minute direct train from Amsterdam Centraal, so there's no painful transfer to factor in.

When you bundle on Multiday.tours, the live flight price from your own home airport shows alongside the tour, in your own currency, so you can weigh the true cost of the trip before committing to either booking.