Things to do in the Netherlands: 28 experiences

1 hour for the highlights, half a day for moreTimed entry

Watch restorers at work on Rembrandt's Night Watch inside a glass chamber, then find Vermeer's Milkmaid among more than 8,000 works.

Timed entry

Walk through the Secret Annex behind the movable bookcase, where Anne Frank, her family and four others hid from 1942 to 1944.

Half a dayTimed entry

Walk among about 7 million flowering bulbs in a garden that opens for only about eight weeks each spring.

About 1 hourGo alone or with a tour

See the gabled houses of the 17th-century Canal Ring from water level, slipping under bridges in a small open boat.

3 to 4 hours with the trip from RotterdamBook ahead

Walk the canal paths past 19 windmills from the 18th century, then step inside two of them to meet the millers.

2 to 3 hoursTimed entry

Follow Van Gogh from the dark Nuenen canvases to the Sunflowers and his last months in Auvers, roughly in the order he painted.

1.5 to 2 hoursBook ahead

Stand in front of Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring and View of Delft in a small 17th-century house by the Binnenhof pond.

2 to 3 hoursFree

Wander narrow streets and small canals built for 17th-century workers, from a market square to the prettiest side canals and a brown café.

1 hourFree

Hold a lightly brined raw herring by the tail, with chopped onion and pickles, at a working street market in De Pijp.

Half a dayNo booking needed

Working windmills, green wooden houses and craft workshops from the Zaan's industrial past, gathered in a village you walk for free.

A full day with the Kröller-Müller MuseumNo booking needed

Ride a free white bike through fenced forest, heath and drifting sand to a museum with one of the largest Van Gogh collections.

1 to 2 hoursFree

Walk Amsterdam's oldest neighbourhood, where a 13th-century church stands among licensed window brothels, bars and family homes.

An eveningBook ahead

Hear jazz in a steeply raked hall over the IJ, with the water and passing boats in the window behind the band.

1.5 to 2 hoursNo booking needed

See where the bulb experiments of the botanist Carolus Clusius helped start the Dutch tulip trade.

Timed entry

Climb 465 steps up the tallest church tower in the Netherlands for a view across Utrecht and, on clear days, much of the province.

2 hours on the water, a full day from AmsterdamBook ahead

Steer an electric whisper boat past thatched farmhouses on islands linked by footbridges, in a village centre with no roads for cars.

1 to 2 hoursFree

Eat Dutch cheese, stroopwafels and fresh fish under a giant painted ceiling of fruit, fish and flowers inside a horseshoe of apartments.

30 to 45 minutesNo booking needed

Stand in a living room with walls leaning outwards and windows looking at the street below your feet.

Half a dayTimed entry

See the 62 sluice gates that stay open to the tide and close only when a storm surge threatens.

3 to 5 hours depending on the routeBook ahead

Walk across the seabed of the Wadden Sea at low tide, through sand, mud and tidal channels, on a UNESCO World Heritage site.

An eveningBook ahead

Hear a band under the stained-glass windows of a former church where Pink Floyd, Nirvana, Prince and the Rolling Stones have all played.

1 hour with the information centreFree

Walk through the courtyard that has been the seat of Dutch politics for centuries, around the 13th-century Hall of Knights.

A full dayBook ahead

Walk through scenes from Grimm and Andersen with animatronic figures in the Fairytale Forest, where the park began in 1952.

2 hours with the basilicaFree

Order a local beer on a café terrace facing a Romanesque basilica and a Gothic church with a red tower.

A full day, better twoNo booking needed

Ride a bike across a flat island of dunes, sheep pastures and villages, with a beach running the whole length of its west coast.

About 2 hours with the rooftopBook ahead

Follow a self-guided route through the first Heineken brewery, built in 1867 and used until 1988, ending at a bar.

1 to 1.5 hoursBook ahead

Get the clearest view back over the old city, the harbour and the railway, and swing out over the roof edge.

Half a day to a full dayNo booking needed

Pair a busy harbour dike of fish stalls and smoked eel shops with the quieter wooden houses on mounds of a former island.