Holland Tulip Tour by Sail and Bike

Day 1: Amsterdam – Volendam
You will check in on board between 1 p.m. and 2 p.m., where the crew will welcome you with coffee and tea. At 2.30 p.m. the ship leaves the harbour, and while she sails to Volendam your tour leader will talk you through the week ahead, the cycling and the safety procedures. On arrival there is the option of a short test ride. After dinner on board, the tour leader will take you for a walk through Volendam, a small and picturesque fishing harbour on the shore of Lake IJsselmeer.

Day 2: Volendam – Hoorn | Hoorn – Enkhuizen (24 km)
Your first cycling day begins after breakfast, with a ride to Hoorn, the old Dutch East India Company town that was one of the world's foremost harbours in the seventeenth century. Along the way you will pass Edam, known everywhere for the cheese wrapped in red or yellow wax, and once an industrious shipyard and port: sailors carried wheels of Edam on their voyages because the cheese does not spoil easily and could be traded for spices and other riches of the East. Later in the afternoon you will rejoin the ship for a sail to Enkhuizen, an old city with centuries of maritime tradition. The herring city has a beautiful old harbour and a historic centre worth wandering before dinner.

Day 3: Enkhuizen – Oudeschild | Sailing day
Today the ship sets sail for the harbour of Oudeschild on the island of Texel. You may lend a hand with the navigation and with hoisting the sails, and no previous sailing experience is needed. You are just as welcome to do nothing at all but sit on deck and watch the IJsselmeer go by. An extensive lunch is served on board while you sail. In the afternoon the ship reaches Oudeschild on Texel, the largest of the Dutch Wadden Isles. No dinner is served tonight, so that you can go ashore and try one of the restaurants in town.

Day 4: Wadden island of Texel: round trip | Oudeschild – Den Helder (43 km or 48 km)
Today you can choose a shorter route or a longer tour around the island. You will cycle through delightful nature reserves and, even here on Texel, through fields of blooming flowers. The signposted routes lead you past picturesque villages and open landscapes, and on to the Ecomare seal sanctuary. At the end of the ride a locally brewed and well-earned beer waits at the small brewery near Oudeschild. In the late afternoon the ship takes you back to the mainland, to the port of Den Helder.

Day 5: Den Helder – St. Maartensvlotbrug | St. Maartensvlotbrug – Alkmaar (32 km or 53 km)
The first part of the ride leads through the northern part of the province of North Holland. This strip of land wedged between the North Sea and the IJsselmeer holds the single biggest flowering bulb field in the world: in one word, spectacular. Closer to Alkmaar you will find more of the most beautiful tulip fields on the way to the North Sea, where the sandy beach is one of the finest in the whole of the Netherlands, the perfect place to feel the wind in your hair. Close by, and certainly worth a visit, is the artists' village of Bergen. The ship will be waiting in the historic centre of Alkmaar, a Dutch cheese city whose old town has kept its well-preserved seventeenth-century buildings and its narrow, winding canals.

Day 6: Alkmaar – Zaandam (47 km)
In the morning you will ride to Egmond and Limmen, once again through colourful tulip fields. Nearby you will visit the Hortus Bulborum, a unique garden museum dedicated to the preservation of rare and historic bulbs, where more than four thousand tulips, daffodils, hyacinths and other special flowers are planted. The next destination is Zaanse Schans, a hamlet where people still live and work among original houses and windmills built beside the river Zaan. The oldest of the working mills dates from 1673, and they were used for grinding mustard seed, spices and paint components, for extracting plant oil and for sawing timber into planks. Walking through the village you will find a clock museum, an old-fashioned grocery store, a house with period furniture, a clog maker and a cheese farm. At the end of the afternoon the ship is waiting for you in Zaandam.

Day 7: Zaandam – Keukenhof – Amsterdam | Full day bus excursion
A beautiful bus ride through the oldest tulip fields of Holland brings you to the famous Keukenhof Gardens. You will have plenty of time to discover the most beautiful bulb park in the world, the place where spring springs: seven million flowering tulips in a magnificent eighty-acre setting of traditional and modern garden architecture, alongside hyacinths, daffodils and many other vibrant flowers. In the afternoon the bus brings you back to Amsterdam, to spend a last restful night in your floating hotel.

Day 8: Amsterdam
End of your tour: after breakfast you can disembark until 9.30 a.m.