Tulip season in Amsterdam is a spectacular botanical experience.

You need to consider visiting the Netherlands during spring to see just how breathtaking it really is.

All of these pretty pictures don’t do it justice.

This April, my friend Teesa traveled with me to Amsterdam to see the tulips at their peak. We felt like we really made the most of our time there. We researched a lot before visiting and came well prepared to experience Amsterdam at it’s most beautiful time of year.

And now I have all the tips and tricks for you!

Just follow this guide, and trust me, seeing the tulips is easier than you think!

When is the best time to see the tulips?

Tulip season is between the middle of March and the beginning of May. You’ll want to plan your trip for mid-to-late April to see as many of the flowers blooming as possible.

Check out the blooming forecast from the tulip festival website while planning your trip so you can plan your visit for when all of the flowers have bloomed.

1. Visit the famous Keukenhof Gardens

The most famous place to see the tulips in Holland is Keukenhof Gardens, an immaculate floral display that’s been open to the public for the past 75 years. It’s located right outside of Amsterdam, and it takes about about 45 minutes to get there by car or bus. If you want the full tulip experience, you have to visit Keukenhof.

Every year, Keukenhof welcomes a over 1 million visitors to its display of – get this – over 7 million flowers!

The garden is full of different variations of many flowers, not just tulips, and they are all planted so perfectly with complementing colors. Each display is an artistic composition, and some arrangements are so perfectly planted that they seem never-ending.

Overall, Keukenhof was remarkable. There were hundreds of flowers around every corner, keeping you enticed with the varying rows, shapes and extensive arrangements. It was extremely well kept, well organized, and aesthetically designed.

With the very helpful garden map in hand, we walked the entire property (took about 3 hours) and stopped at all of the 5 pavilions throughout. At each pavilion, there were different souvenirs, food stands and indoor exhibits. We read about the history of the tulip festival and saw vintage advertisements from decades ago, which I found to be very cool.

At one of the indoor exhibits, we learned about the life cycle of tulips and the climate needed for them to grow. Keukenhof can be educational if you want it to be, but the main draw of the experience is taking in the beauty of all the different parts of the garden.

You’ll also be able to see tulip fields from the very edge of the gardens. There are a few viewpoints from one specific corner of the property where you can climb a windmill for a view of the neighboring fields.

I think we visited at the most perfect time (April 12-18, 2025). All of the flowers were bloomed. Although there were crowds in the gardens, which I expected, I thought Keukenhof was absolutely worth the hype.

Here’s how you can see Keukenhof Gardens:

You will need to buy a ticket to Keukenhof gardens, and I recommend to buy the ticket and bus package deal from from the Tulip Festival website in advance. Our ticket and transportation were provided by the company “This is Holland.”

With this ticket for about $56, you get round trip bus fare from Amsterdam and entry into the gardens. Prices change based on the date you plan to visit, with peak season being the most expensive ticket you can buy.

While buying your ticket secures your departure from Amsterdam, it allows you to take any available bus back from the gardens for the rest of the day. So there’s complete flexibility and you can stay at the gardens for however long you would like, or at least until the last bus leaves around 6:30.

I bought tickets about 2 months in advance so I could get the exact day and time that I wanted.

2. Ride bikes through the Dutch countryside

The most authentic way to see the flowers in Holland is to hop on a bike and start looking around! Bikes are kind of “the thing” in Amsterdam, so you should definitely ride one while you’re visiting. And why not take it for a ride to see some flowers!

The bike ride I took was perfect because I got to see some fields up close, walk around them, respectfully of course, and take some great up close photos.

In other fields, we could get close but we couldn’t walk through them, so we stood at the edge to take photos. There were also plenty of other fields that were in the distance, and as we passed by all we could see were landscapes of color. These moments on my bike ride seemed unreal.

I’ve always found flowers pretty, but there was so much beauty in seeing so many at once and all together.

For me, riding bikes around the fields was even better than visiting Keukenhof. While the experiences were so different, seeing the fields was just so unique to me, and it’s definitely the best way to see the tulips in Holland.

Here’s an easy way to rent bikes in Holland

After you’ve taken in the most of Keukenhof, you can exit the gardens and rent bikes at the rental stand near the park entrance. Look for the little bike icon on the map if you need help finding the rental area.

For 11 euros per person, you can rent a bike for three hours and follow one of their four routes around the local tulip fields.

We followed the “green route” outlined on the map, which the staff suggested because that was the route with the most flower fields.

3. See the tulips around the city

When you’re in the center city, there are plenty of flowers planted all around, outside of people’s front doors, and decorating tour boats in the canals, even at the airport. There’s also two great places in the city to check out:

Visit Bloemenmarkt (The Floating Flower Market)

You can find a lot of tulips at the floating flower market.

Located on the Singel Canal, this flower market is a collection of vendors that sells tulip bulbs and fully bloomed tulips for sale along with souvenirs and trinkets.

I had a really fun time walking around and seeing the variation of tulips and the beautiful bunches for sale.

Pay a visit to the Tulip Museum

There’s tulips out front, so many tulip bulbs and tulip decor inside, and there’s even a museum you can pay to enter. For about 8 euros, you can learn all about the tulip harvesting process and their life cycle.

Tips for the best tulip experience in Amsterdam

There’s genuinely no better feeling than than the magic of running through a tulip field. I had seen so many photos online, but this was absolutely unreal.

1. Visit Keukenhof in the morning or on weekdays
   • Get a head start to avoid crowds!
2. Bring a good camera
   • You won’t be able to stop taking photos. Each corner is more captivating than the last.
3. Put some thought into the dates you’re visiting
   • Make sure you book your trip for a good time – you want to make sure as many flowers are bloomed as possible.
4. Wear comfortable shoes
   • Walking around Keukenhof and Amsterdam and riding bikes will all require comfortable shoes, so come prepared!

Have you ever been to Amsterdam during tulip season? Where did you see the best flowers? Let me know!