Top of my travel bucket list for some time has been the tulips of Amsterdam (alongside the Northern Lights, which continue to evade me! Sadly no sightings in Iceland, Finland or Canada!)

But I made it to Amsterdam during tulip season 2023! A trip I first booked in 2019! Four years, four cancellations and a global pandemic later, I finally made it!

I stayed at the aptly named NH Collection Amsterdam Flower Market hotel, situated adjacent to the Floating Flower Market. The flower stalls stand on houseboats moored on the Singel canal and sell flowers, bulbs and all manner of souvenirs, from wooden tulips to clogs to cheese. The flower market is open daily from 9am to 5:30pm (11:30am to 5:30pm Sundays) and is situated near the Muntplein.

The best time to see tulips in Amsterdam is from mid March to mid May. I visited at the start of April and was a week or two early for the peak blooms in the fields, probably because the weather at that time was still pretty cool in Amsterdam! So it can be tricky to plan your visit, however tulipfestivalamsterdam.com publish a flower forecast every year to maximise your chances of visiting at the best time.

There are plenty of tulips to be seen planted around the city, but for tulip lovers a visit to the tulip fields is a must. I visited the most famous show gardens at Keukenhof. The gardens get very busy but are spacious and I didn’t find it too crowded, although I would recommend going early. I booked a Private Keukenhof and Tulip Experience Tour via Get Your Guide, which included hotel pick up and drop off, a professional driver with Mercedes Benz vehicle and entrance tickets to Keukenhof and the Tulip Experience Amsterdam. This was a pricey option, but after four years of waiting I was going to visit in style! It is possible to visit Keukenhof with shuttle bus round trip from central Amsterdam. Transfer time is approximately 40 minutes.

Well worth a visit is the Tulip Experience Amsterdam. A family business where you can discover the history and growing process of the tulips and take photographs among 1 million tulips in the selfie showgarden! 

There is so much more to Amsterdam than tulips. For a start it has an excellent street food scene which I have written a separate blog post about, as well as the canals, museums and of course red light district! A quirky city, with a flight time of just over an hour from Cardiff with KLM, has finally been ticked off my bucket list!