South Holland: Rotterdam, The Hague, Delft and tulips

Half a dayGo alone or with a tour

In spring the fields between Leiden and Haarlem turn into stripes of daffodils, hyacinths and tulips, flat enough to ride for hours.

1 to 2 hoursFree

The 1641 manor that gave the famous gardens their name sits in a free park of woods, sculpture and old kitchen gardens next door.

1 hourNo booking needed

A small museum in Lisse on how a sandy strip of coast became the world's bulb garden, and how new tulips are made.

Half a dayFree

Once a year, floats covered in hyacinths and tulips ride 42 kilometres from Noordwijk to Haarlem through the bulb towns.

Half a day with the townFree

Wheels of Gouda traded on the Markt where the town's cheese has been weighed since the seventeenth century, under a Gothic town hall.

2 to 3 hoursNo booking needed

Egypt gave the Netherlands the Temple of Taffeh in thanks for saving Nubia's monuments, and it now stands in a Leiden museum hall.

Half a dayTimed entry

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

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.

1.5 to 2 hoursNo booking needed

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