Holland International Canal Cruises

We took a night cruise during the light festival, this was one of the only cruise lines we could find still doing cruises around 8PM on January 6^th. There was a stand in front of the boat selling reasonably priced drinks but none available on board for purchase. One of the first light sculptures we passed was on a timer, while the captain said we couldn’t wait there were several other boats waiting for it to start again. That kind of put a bad taste in my mouth and made me wish I would have gone on a cruise with the other companies. Otherwise the rest of the cruise was fine, the captain was pretty humorous and the pre recorded messages about the sculptures were loud enough to hear.

This was the second of two canal cruises Scott and I went on during our stay in Amsterdam.
Thanks to the Unilocal community in Amsterdam, it was recommended that we go on a cruise in the evening as the Amsterdam Festival of Light was on, and we’d be able to see all of the light installations on the canals in all their glory!
It was a thoroughly enjoyable tour, lasting around 75 minutes, and worth the price at 20 EUR each. I only wish I had taken a half decent camera with me so that I could have taken some decent pictures! I wouldn’t hesitate to do this canal tour again!

A generally good experience with Holland International, and I had booked tickets to the Rijksmuseum and Van Gogh Museum with them… as well as an obligatory «100 Highlights» Canal Cruise. Booking for multiple activities does seem to allow for at least a bit of a discount.
For the 100 Highlights canal cruise, you go out into the harbor itself and then come back through the canal system through various channels to see the different areas of interest through Amsterdam. The entire cruise includes a narration of those points of interest, which repeats the vast majority of the information in multiple languages. Admittedly, it’s not always the most interesting information, but it’s generally pretty solid historical-​type info for folks who would be interested in knowing more about the city. If I recall correctly, I think there’s also an app for the cruise company through iTunes. I should’ve rechecked before the cruise itself, considering I probably could have heard some of the information more clearly if I had been playing an app and wearing headphones.
Anyway, I sat in the back of the boat, which was fine. The bathroom is in the back of the boat, but it wasn’t an issue. I’m also not exactly sure what the best seating alternative is on the cruise boat, especially for photos. We did have windows that could open, but they weren’t especially helpful for taking photos… so my colleague and I would switch seats once in a while to take photos from one direction or another (otherwise, one of us was just going to be taking photos through glass).
Enjoyable overall, but would probably have had a better experience on a boat that was smaller and/​or more open. I don’t think that I really got to see or experience most of the sights from the canal perspective because it was such a long boat. Holland International boats seem pretty large (ours was probably holding around 30 people)… the boats are more fitting, perhaps, for a dinner cruise type atmosphere.
As far as the pre-​purchased tickets for the Rijksmuseum and Van Gogh Museum, pre-​purchasing was both helpful and not. For the Rijkmuseum, it worked out nicely. We got into the museum without issue (and the ticket you get after exchanging your voucher at any Holland International location is good for any day of your choice); that said, it takes a bit longer to get into the Van Gogh Museum, even with pre-​purchased tickets (they have a variety of queues).
TL;DR Meh. generally good, but probably would have had a better cruise experience with a more indepedent-​ish cruise operator/​captain.

Took the Hop on Hop off Canal and it was very enjoyable. So peaceful that at times I took a nap. Not that the history of the city wasn’t informative but a little jet-​lag and lack of movement probably caused it. Some of the more bar-​scene, social people might find this tour beyond the scenery and peace to be boring. Then again, it is a hop on hop off like the buses so you’re not required to stay for the duration of the tour. It stops at Museumplein (Rijksmuseum, Van Gogh Museum), Anne Frank House, Rembrandt, Red Light District, and plenty of major sites around Amsterdam. Regardless of whether you’re a local who hasn’t done one of these or an avid traveler, you just go on this hopper!

Amsterdam was originally founded in the 12^th century as a fishing village named after the Amstel River.
Over time, it developed into the current canal system which consists of 165 inter-​connecting canals with a combined length of over 60 miles, and over 1,200 bridges (3 times as many as Venice). In 2010, the canal rings became part of the UNESCO World Heritage list.
Obviously, a visit to Amsterdam is definitely incomplete without a canal cruise.
Holland International (not to be confused with the cruise line Holland America) offers a wide variety of canal cruises — daytime sightseeing cruise, cocktail cruise, candlelight cruise, dinner cruise, etc.
I would highly recommend the dinner cruise for 79 Euros per person (which includes wine served throughout the dinner) as a nice dinner in a good restaurant with wine costs just about as much.
TIP: Book your reservation online, print out the confirmation and go to the ticket office early to exchange it for you boarding pass. There are no seat reservations and tables are assigned on a first-​come-​first-​served basis. So to get a table by the window, arrive half an hour or more early to be at the front of the line.
There were 3 menu choices: meat, fish or vegetarian. We both opted for the meat menu, and here’s what we got:
The Amuse Bouche: Dutch herb-​flavored poffertje with goat cheese and honey.
Poffertjes are traditional Dutch small fluffy pancakes with a light, airy and somewhat spongy texture. Paired with the delicious goat cheese and a hint of honey, they definitely served the purpose of the «amuse» course, which was to stimulate the palate.
Appetizer: Salad of baby potatoes with Parma ham, Amsterdam pickles.
Those Dutch baby potatoes were so yummy and so naturally sweet. The dressing, made with fresh cream, was light and refreshing. The Parma ham, rich in flavor but not overly salty, was the perfect companion of the potato salad.
Soup: Cappuccino from sweet red pepper.
This was served the traditional Dutch way — in a glass coffee mug. You are supposed to drink it, just like you drink coffee, and not to spoon it. This tasted like a chicken based broth cooked with red pepper among other spices. It was absolutely delicious. WOW!
Main Course: Veal escalope with cauliflower mousseline and asparagus.
This dish was very flavorful and the veggies were so fresh and crispy. The only slight disappointment was that the veal was a bit tough and chewy. It might have been overcooked a bit. Personally I’m not a fan of a veal steak that thick. A thinly sliced scaloppini version might be better.
Dessert: Strawberries with sabayon and a hint of tarragon.
Sabayon is a French mousse-​like creamy dessert that’s light, slightly sweet, and with a hint of white wine. It’s a refreshing pairing with strawberries which I really liked.
Service has been awesome throughout the night and our wine glasses were refilled promptly and often. There was no guided tour or narration so you could enjoy your dinner and conversation. However, The boat did stop at various important landmarks where the captain would give us a quick history about the place and also allow for a picture opportunity.
We were so glad that we took this dinner cruise on our first trip to Amsterdam, and I would highly recommend that you do the same on your first trip there.
4.5 stars rounded up to 5 stars.

Had a wonderful dinner cruise with these guys!
Nice tour in the summer around sunset, and it was about 2 hours total.
Setting was beautiful and staff was fabulously nice. Word to the wise that the steak is cooked to death to a well done, but the mash is pure butter and sexy!
Unlimited beverages, wine included.
Fabulous way to see Amsterdam. Definitely recommend dinner cruise!

Boring! Yawn!

A canal trip that gives you little trivia info blurbs about everything and nothing regarding modern and historic Amsterdam. I was here as a tourist so of course I had to go!
The boats are fairly spacious and rotate on a constant cycle so the line moves fast. Price of admission is fair.
Did you know that a lot of the reason why breweries were so popular back in the day was that the brewery process made beer more sanitary than water.
Did you know that Amsterdam has 2500 house boats?
Did you know that the wooden floodgates are renovated every 50 years?
Go on a canal trip and see this beautiful city from a different perspective! It will help you orientate when you’re walking around too!

WARNING: come here at your own risk of falling asleep. Let me explain…
The 100 Highlights is a great tour. About ¹⁄₃ of the way through you’ll notice that EVERY building has a big hook in the top center. They WILL explain that! You get to see lots of really big attractions of Amsterdam, learn about the history, and at one point we even saw a boat pulling hundreds of mangled bicycles out of the water. You can’t get better timing.
The boat captains are incredible for making the turns that they do. That’s a marvel on its own.
The reason I warn against your own sleepiness: being on a low speed, gentle boat ride for over an hour WILL lull you into a hazy slumber. I don’t care who you are… Though this warning mostly applies to the twenty– to thirty– somethings that may have been out all night and slept for a mere couple hours. We can have it all!

night time all-​you-​can drink wine cruise on the canal.
25 Euro /​person.
So romantic and fun.
Do it. Do it.

We got this free with the IAmsterdam card. Enjoyed it. The prerecorded info is a little sparse– after all, each snippet has to be said in Dutch, German and English (in that order). But the cruise offers a nice overview of Amsterdam. I think a live guide would be excellent– and I saw some of those, but I’m sure they were expensive. This was fine for us. I agree with the folks who say taking pictures is difficult– it is. This is really more of an experiential ride– it’s not for photographers.

My bf really wanted to do a canal boat cruise while we were in Amsterdam, and our hotel told us that they all left from across the main train station, so we went there and checked out the options from Holland International Canal Cruises.
They had several options, some with food and drinks, and some were quite pricey. We decided to do the 100 Highlights Cruise, which cost 15.50 euros per adult and took about 1 hour.
We went to the very back of the boat, thinking there would be more leg room for my bf’s long legs, but it turned out that the wooden bench with the cushions weren’t that comfortable. And we were next to the toilet, which was kind of yucky. Oh well.
The cruise itself was quite pleasant, and it was nice to get a different vantage point of all the sights we had been looking at from land. The commentary was nice and informative, too.
The only thing I didn’t like was that my vantage point didn’t make for very good picture-​taking. For one, it’s kind of difficult to take photos from a moving boat, and since we were at the very end, I didn’t always get to see what they were trying to show us whenever they paused the boat.
For instance, there was one point where you were supposed to see a whole bunch of arches in a line (like 7 of them or something), but I was at the wrong angle, and there were too many people’s heads in the way, so I couldn’t get a good photo.
Despite the lack of fabulous pictures, it was a pleasant experience to enjoy the canals and rest our feet.

We went on a short 1.5 hour tour. Too bad we had a jerk who thought he knew everything in our boat. We had around 6 people total in the boat. After dropping off the offensive tourist back to the dock, we could all breathe and enjoy. Haha. Kind of wish we got more history but it was meant to be a small relaxing ride, not a large tour boat. The guy on the boat was very nice though and seemed to love his job :) a nice experience if you didn’t have much time to commit. We were only in amsterdam for 2 days so it was crunch time!

Two wonderful hours, at night, on a comfortable canal boat cruising the waters by candlelight. Wine and cheese in plentiful supply with great views of the illuminated Amsterdam. Good service from a friendly young lady and a great female captain. Well worth the money if you would like a romantic couple of hours on the canals.

I paid 15 Euro for a 75 minute canal cruise, and it was probably the best way I could have spent that 15 Euro in Amsterdam. I did the «100 Highlights» cruise. The guide was prerecorded, but it did a number of languages, so that was probably the most effective way to go about it. Do the canal tour, you won’t regret it.

I had a 60 – 90 minute canal cruise on my trip to Amsterdam. Came with the purchase of the Amsterdam card. While the boat and staff were a bit off-​putting, the tour was good for its’ price. It’s pre-​recorded, but you learn a lot more about Amsterdam.

We went on the 90 minute canal cruise on Holland International during our stay in Amsterdam. The glass enclosed river canal boat has booths and was pretty comfy.
There is no live tour guide but rather a pre-​recorded audio which gives you some insight into Amsterdam’s history and its development. The cruise went through the different canals of Amsterdam, by the Anne Frank House, through the Red Light District, out into the open water near the Science and Technology museum and back again.
I enjoyed the canal cruise which gave me a different viewpoint of the city. I’m a fan… 4 Stars!

We only had a few short hours in Amsterdam before an early flight the next morning & this was an excellent way to see the city.
Most of the shops close by 5pm so unless it’s a t-​shirt shop or coffee shop, there isn’t much to see after that time — at least since I didn’t feel comfortable walking around there after dark for my very first visit.
The dinner cruise was about $ 100 per person U.S. About 75 euro.
It was worth every penny! The cruise itself is 2.5 hrs long. You are served prosecco then wine, first an amuse bouche, then a salad course, soup course, fish or meat course (you choose in advance at the time of booking) and dessert course. Wine is served throughout & then an excellent coffee at the end.
We sat at the very front of the boat behind the captain & he was super accommodating & informative as I kept jumping up to either side of him to slide open the window/​door to take photos. He was very nice and kept reminding me to keep my head down as we went under low bridges.
He pointed out various sites that I might have missed otherwise. I think I was probably kind of an annoyance for the other diners, but I couldn’t waste the only opportunity to take pix!
We went past a lot of the various neighborhoods that you hear so much about. It was also the only sunny day we had our whole trip, so that made it extra nice.
Our servers were Kers & Marline & they were so friendly and charming.
Again… I highly recommend, but definitely book in advance. We were lucky to get on as last minute passengers as we booked only 2 hours before the cruise and we didn’t get to choose our meal. It was veal though and good.

The boat we took was well kept, the dock easy to find, cheerful captain.
We bought the I Amsterdam Card so the cruise came free, it was nice to have that taken care of. The day we went it poured but we still learned a lot about the city. They could have turned up the volume of the speaker, it was hard to hear amidst all the other chatty tourists.

Zu Amsterdam und seinen Grachten gehört natürlich auch eine Grachtenrundfahrt. Da wir uns am Neujahrstag bei der Blue Boat Company schlecht aufgehoben (
) gefühlt hatten, waren wir zu TUI canal cruises in der Nähe des Hauptbahnhofes gegangen.
Die Fahrt im Grachtenboot dauerte hier zwar kürzer als eine Fahrt bei der Konkurrenz hätte dauern sollen, aber Grachten und die typischen Häuser an den Grachten sieht man überall.
Nachdem wir uns keine 10 Minuten mit der IAmSterdam-​Card am Tickethäuschen angestellt hatten, konnten wir auch schon das Boot besteigen. Achtung: Es gibt zwei Häuschen der canal cruises. Mit der IAmSterdam-​Card geht man besser zum unteren der beiden Häuschen; also das Häuschen, was nicht an einer Brücke gelegen ist: Hier stehen bedeutend weniger Leute an und es geht schneller, da hier NUR die Grachtenfahrten gelöst werden können. Beim oberen, an der Brücke gelegenen Verkaufshaus werden noch ein Dutzend weitere Fahrten angeboten. Entsprechend lang sind die Warteschlangen aufgrund Auswahl und wohl entstehenden Beratungsgesprächen.
Das Boot war mit wahrscheinlich mehr als 20 Tischen ausgestattet zu denen jeweils zwei Bänke gehörten. Auf jeder Bank konnten zwei erwachsene Personen sitzen. An Bord hätte es meines Wissens nach beim Kapitän oder im Heck des Schiffes einfache Getränke (Cola, Wasser, …) für einen Preis von um die 1,50 bzw. 2,00 Euro gegeben. Der Kapitän riß ein paar kleine Witze auf Englisch und fragte dann, welche Nationen an Bord sein. Die Frage erfolgte nicht aus persönlicher Neugier des Bootssteuerers, sondern weil er Erklärungen zu Sehenswürdigkeiten in bis zu vier Sprachen abspielen könne, jedoch Erklärungen in sechs Sprachen auf seiner Anlage gespeichert seien.
Die Erklärungen auf Französisch, Italienisch, Englisch und Spanisch waren laut und deutlich. Teilweise setzen sie aber zu spät ein bzw. wiederholten sich teilweise, was einen erbärmlichen Eindruck bewirkte, wenn man nach 20 Minuten Fahrt nochmal an Bord begrüßt wurde bzw. Sehenswürdigkeiten nochmal erklärt wurden, die schon lange außer Sicht waren.
Ähnlich erschreckend wirkte, dass der Kapitän drei Mal an Stangen und Ufer teilweise recht heftig anstieß. Als wir beim NEMO Museum beim Wenden mit einem ziemlichen Knall an eine Stange angefahren waren, machten sich wohl schon einige Passagiere des komplett voll besetzten Boötes auf eine unfreiwillige Schwimmtour im eiskalten Januar-​Wasser gefasst. Das Eisbaden blieb aber aus, das Boot hatte kein Leck.
Leider waren die Plexiglas-​Scheiben unter denen man als Passagier sitzt nicht besonders sauber und relativ verschmiert, so dass Fotos vom Schiff aus nicht wirklich gelingen konnten. Da es keine Gelegenheit gibt, die Plexiglasüberdachung zu verlassen, fanden wir es ein wenig schade, dass man die Scheiben nicht sauberer gehalten hatte. Zwar ließen sich einzelne Fensterscheiben wechselweise durch Schieben öffnen (wenn auch nur relativ schwergängig), doch bei winterlichen Temperaturen zogen es alle Passagiere vor, nicht zu erfrieren und lieber auf gelungene Schnappschüsse zu verzichten.
Aber abgesehen von den «Randlereien» des Capitans und den nicht streifenfreien Plexiglasscheiben, war die Fahrt sehr interessant und kurzweilig. Man kommt durch viele Grachten durch und sieht einige bekannte und interessante Gebäude und Hausboote.
Die Fahrt ist mit der IAmSterdam-​Card inklusive.

Von Freunden wurde uns diese Grachtentour empfohlen, obwohl diese preislich mit 12EUR für Erwachsene (6EUR Kinder bis 12 Jahre) deutlich über den normalen Angeboten 8−9EUR lag. Allerdings ist die Tour komplett auf Deutsch, startet direkt am Hauptbahnhof und auch Fragen sind erlaubt :).
Wer einen guten Einstieg in Amsterdam haben möchte, sollte auf jeden Fall mit einer Grachtentour beginnen. Anschließend kann man die schönsten Orte schnell zu Fuß oder mit dem Fahrrad erkunden. Auf der Homepage erhält man alle weiteren Informationen und Angebote (z.B. Dinner-​Cruise oder Ultimate Cruise) z.B. für Leute, die Amsterdam schon ein zweites Mal besuchen.