Amsterdam is small, expensive and easy to do badly. Book museum slots weeks ahead, skip the red-light walking tours, and get out to the countryside once.
Amsterdam punishes people who arrive without tickets and rewards people who treat museums as the trip. The canals are the setting. They are not a six-activity itinerary.
Book the three houses of culture first — Rijks, Van Gogh, Anne Frank — then add water and a day out. Everything sold as "Amsterdam experience" (pub crawl, mystery rooms, pancake boats) is competing with some of the best museums in Europe. That is a bad trade.
Book: timed museum tickets on official or transparent resellers, Jordaan food, one daytime canal hour, Keukenhof if your dates hit the season.
Skip: evening party boats, most "alternative" walking tours that are just the Jordaan with jokes, and any Anne Frank ticket not from the museum's own system.
Museumplein on a Saturday is a queue ecosystem. Do not sandwich Rijks and Van Gogh back to back with a 20-minute gap. Give each a morning. Eat in De Pijp, not on the square.
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Buy the official timed ticket. Skip guided "skip the line" products that are just the same ticket with a meeting point. Go at opening and head to the Gallery of Honour first.
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Sells out. Book as soon as you have dates. Audio guide is enough. Any "guided skip the line" is usually the same timed ticket.
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Mid-March to mid-May only. Keukenhof is a garden park, not a wild field. Tours that add a "photo field" stop are the ones that get you the roadside tulips. Coach parking is grim — small group or train plus bus also works.
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Official site only, tickets drop on a schedule, and they vanish. Do not buy a third-party "guarantee." If you cannot get a ticket, do not take a canal tour that points at the outside and calls it a visit.
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Amsterdam food is better than its reputation if you leave the steak-and-pancake streets near Centraal. Jordaan crawls are the reliable fix.
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Once, in daylight, not the pizza-cruise. The city is built to be seen from the water. After 7pm many boats are drinking parties. Smaller boats cost more and are worth it.
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Zaanse Schans is a working windmill area and also a coach park. Fine for half a day. Giethoorn is prettier and further. Do not do a "five villages" mash-up.
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Three museum days plus one countryside day is the honest minimum. Two days is only the two big museums and a walk, and you will feel it.
Only if you will use the included transport heavily and hit several smaller museums. It does not save money on Rijks plus Van Gogh plus Anne Frank, which are the expensive ones and often excluded or uncapped poorly. Do the maths.
The centre is congested. Stay in De Pijp, Oud-West or near Westerpark and tram in. Cycling is the local mode and also how tourists get hit — if you are not used to Dutch bike traffic, walk.
Rules have tightened, ID checks are real, and organised red-light walking tours are grim for residents. If you go, go quietly without a tour group and a selfie stick. It is a neighbourhood, not a theme park.
Anne Frank House, then Van Gogh, then weekend Rijksmuseum. Keukenhof coaches in April.
