Amsterdam to Paris Circuit in 8 Days

This small-group tour makes it even easier to get out and see it. A great way to combine visits to two of the Netherlands’ most interesting historical and cultural attractions, Zaanse Schans and Giethoorn, this full-day tour includes everything you need for a good time, from cheese tastings to a boat trip and some windmills.

Departure from Amsterdam

Roughly an hour's drive south to Delft.

Giethoorn — the whisper boat

An hour on the canals in a silent electric boat, past thatched farmhouses sitting on their own private islands. Most tours let you steer it yourself — no licence needed. Look for the reed-thatched roofs: thatch was historically the poor man's roofing here, which is why the "richest-looking" village in Holland is roofed in the cheapest material.

Lunch and free time in the village

Walk the footpath along the main canal. The bridges are private property belonging to individual houses, so stay on the public path — and note that pancakes here are a genuine local speciality, not a tourist invention.

Zaanse Schans — working windmills

Not a museum village but a working one: mills here still grind pigment, spices and oil the way they did in the 1700s. Go inside at least one — the whole floor rotates and the noise of the machinery is the point. The cheese farm and clog workshop are free to enter.

Back in Amsterdam

Dinner at leisure on your own. After a long driving day, somewhere within walking distance of the hotel is the kind thing to do.

Why i recommend this tour, and not the usual one

Most Amsterdam day tours sell you the same Volendam–Marken–windmill loop. This one is chosen for a specific reason: Giethoorn has no roads in its old centre. It is built across islands linked by 176 little wooden bridges, and residents move by boat. There is nothing else like it in the Netherlands, and photographs of it do not prepare you for how quiet it is.

Visit three of the Netherlands most interesting cities in one day on this with tour On's Exlcusive small-group tour from Amsterdam. Led by a tour On's local expert, this full-day tour of The Hague, Delft, and Rotterdam offers travelers a fascinating overview of each city.

Departure from Amsterdam

Roughly an hour's drive south to Delft.

Delft — Vermeer's town

The Oude Kerk's tower leans about two metres out of true and has done for centuries. Walk the Markt between the Nieuwe Kerk and the town hall. If the tour includes Royal Delft, the painting studio is the part to watch — every piece is still hand-painted, and the cobalt paint looks black until it is fired.

The Hague — Mauritshuis & the Peace Palace

The Mauritshuis is a former mansion, not a mega-museum: you can see everything in about 75 minutes without rushing. Go to Girl with a Pearl Earring first, then come back to her at the end — she is a completely different painting once you've seen the room she hangs in. The Peace Palace (International Court of Justice) is normally a photo stop from the gates.

Rotterdam — architecture and the harbour

The Cube Houses at Blaak, the Markthal for lunch under its 11,000 m² painted ceiling, and the Erasmus Bridge — nicknamed The Swan. If the tour includes the Spido harbour boat, take it: Rotterdam is Europe's largest port and its scale only registers from the water.

Inclusions:

• Hotel pick-up service
• 1 bottled water per person
• Entrance Ticket Madurodam

Rijksmuseum — go at opening

Walk in at 09:00 and go straight to the Gallery of Honour before anyone else does. Rembrandt's Night Watch is at the far end; Vermeer's Milkmaid and Little Street are on the way. Do that first half-hour properly and everything after it is a bonus. Allow 2.5 hours. Don't miss the library and the 17th-century doll's houses.

Lunch on Museumplein

The two museums are a three-minute walk apart across the same lawn this is the easiest double-museum day in Europe.

Van Gogh Museum [ timed entry ]

Around 200 paintings and 500 drawings, hung chronologically over four floors, so you literally walk through his life from the dark Dutch years to the final Auvers canvases. Allow 2 hours. Timed entry slots are compulsory and must be booked online in advance there is no ticket desk queue to join.

Canal Cruise

Board from the jetty behind the Rijksmuseum. Choose an open or semi-open small boat over a large glass-roofed one — glare through the glass ruins photographs, and the small boats reach the narrow canals. 75–90 minutes. Amsterdam's canal ring is UNESCO-listed and was dug in the 1600s as a single planned expansion, which is why it is a perfect set of arcs.

A'DAM Lookout [Timed Entry]

Walk out of the back of Centraal station and take the Buiksloterweg ferry it is free, takes 3 minutes and runs around the clock. The Lookout is directly at the landing. The observation deck is 360°, and Over the Edge is Europe's highest swing, which swings you out over the edge of the building 100 metres above the water.

Inclusions for the Day:

• Entrance Ticket for Van Gogh Museum
• Entrance Ticket for Rijksmuseum Museum
• Canal Cruise Ticket - 60 Minutes
• Entrance Ticket for ADAM's LookOut & 1 Swing Experience

Amsterdam Centraal

Be at the platform 30 minutes before. This route is entirely inside the Schengen area, so there is no passport control unlike the London trains. Buy breakfast at the station; the on-board café is limited in Standard class.

Arrive Paris Gare du Nord

Gare du Nord is busy and pickpockets work it. Keep bags closed and walk straight out to the taxi rank rather than lingering in the concourse.

Hotel bag drop & lunch

Rooms won't be ready before 15:00, but every hotel will store luggage. Eat near the hotel the afternoon is tightly scheduled [Recommendation for your Hotels will be shared later]

Seine river cruise — 1 hour

The Seine is the best possible orientation to Paris, because the city was built facing it. Suggestion: take a smaller boat from Vedettes du Pont Neuf at the tip of Île de la Cité rather than the big Bateaux Mouches it departs from the historic centre rather than the edge, and the boats are less crowded. Sit at the back, outside: the commentary is better heard and the view of Notre-Dame receding is the shot everyone wants.

Arc de Triomphe [The rooftop terrace]

Book the rooftop, not just the monument. From the terrace, twelve avenues radiate away from you in a perfect star this is the one view in Paris where the city's plan suddenly makes sense, and it's the only high point from which you can photograph the Eiffel Tower in the skyline rather than being on it.

Sunset, then the Eiffel Tower after dark

Two ways to do this, and they are genuinely different experiences [From our Opinion]

• To go up: book a summit ticket online well in advance.
• Lifts to the top sell out first. Paris at night from 276 m is worth the queue.

To photograph it: don't go up go to Trocadéro across the river, or the lawn at Champ de Mars. The tower sparkles for five minutes on every hour after dark, and you cannot see that from on top of it. If you only do one, most people are happier with the sparkle from the ground.

Spend the full day at Disneyland Paris, enjoying thrilling rides, parades, Disney character meet-ups and live entertainment. Explore both parks or one park depending on the ticket choice, including world-famous attractions such as Pirates of the Caribbean, Space Mountain and Sleeping Beauty Castle. Evening return to hotel after closing hours.

08:30 | Be at the gates before opening

The single highest-value thing you can do all day. The first 90 minutes are worth the following four hours in ride throughput.

Inclusions:

• Two-way transfers to Disneyland Paris
• Full-day Disneyland entry ticket

The Covered Passages — Paris before the department store

Between 1800 and 1850 Paris built around 150 passages couverts: glass-roofed shopping arcades with mosaic floors, built so wealthy Parisians could shop without stepping in the mud of unpaved streets. They are the direct ancestor of every shopping mall on earth.

About two dozen survive.

Walk them in this order, all within fifteen minutes of each other:

• Galerie Vivienne (1823 — the most beautiful, with a mosaic floor by Facchina)
• Passage des Panoramas (1800, the oldest, now full of tiny restaurants and stamp dealers),
• Passage Jouffroy & Passage Verdeau. Arrive by 09:30, they are empty then and the low morning light comes through the glass roofs at an angle.

Palais-Royal — the striped columns

The Colonnes de Buren: 260 black-and-white striped columns of varying heights set in a historic courtyard, installed in 1986 and deeply controversial at the time. Endlessly photogenic and free. Then the Palais-Royal gardens behind arcaded, silent, and about ninety seconds from the Louvre, which almost nobody realises.

Le Marais — Place des Vosges & a very strange museum

Place des Vosges (1612) is the oldest planned square in Paris, and its arcades are the most pleasant lunch spot in the city. Then Village Saint-Paul, a warren of linked courtyards full of antique dealers.

The one to actually go into: the Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature — a hunting and nature museum inside a Marais mansion, staged like the private house of an eccentric collector, with a ceiling made entirely of owls. It is one of the most unusual museums in Europe and the tour groups have never heard of it.

Golden hour [choose your frame]

• Montmartre, but not the Sacré-Cœur steps. Go instead to Rue de l'Abreuvoir (the most photographed street in the quarter for good reason)
• La Maison Rose, and the Clos Montmartre vineyard, a working vineyard inside the city that still produces a few hundred bottles a year.
• Institut du Monde Arabe rooftop, a free public terrace with one of the finest views of Notre-Dame and the Seine bends, and hardly any visitors. The building's south facade is covered in mechanical apertures modelled on camera irises that open and close with the sunlight; worth seeing from inside too.

Note: The Day is planned to explore on your own and no expenses involved other than your Hotel on this Day

After breakfast, check out and transfer to Paris CDG Airport for your flight back to India. Bid farewell to Europe with beautiful memories of Swiss lakes, Italian art, history, and cuisine that will stay with you forever.

Last-minute shopping

If gifts are still outstanding: Galeries Lafayette for the stained-glass dome and the rooftop, or Rue Montorgueil for food. Both are 15 minutes from Gare du Nord.

Inclusions:

• Private airport transfer (Hotel → Airport)
• Assistance with departure formalities