Holland and Belgium trip

The official rating on the tour page is moderately active.

"Activity Level
This is a moderately active tour! Most days are moderately paced with 2–8 miles of walking, including some hills and stairs."

Here is a link to my Trip Report for this tour from April 2019.

https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/tours/trip-report-rs-belgium-holland-4-6-4-16-2019-plus-time-in-paris

"Tour days were mostly around 5 miles with the longest day being the Keukenhof/Amsterdam day coming in at 8 miles. That day I put in 5 miles in the gardens then we did a longish walk/Amsterdam city tour on the way to dinner which added another 3-ish miles. Thank goodness we took the tram back to the hotel!"

Having said that Belgium and Netherlands are pretty flat. I think it was more distances than stairs that made some days tiring for me as I'd not gotten enough mileage in when preparing for this trip. I don't really remember much in the way of hills or stairs but I've just returned from Best Of Italy and there are so many hills and stairs in Rome that that memory might be clouding my mind, hahaha! The most stairs I can remember are in the Rijksmuseum and in the Van Gogh Museum although there are elevators in both.

If you are walking on flat areas...what kind of distance can you do? You'd not have to put in the # of miles I did at Keukenhof....I walked a LOT there which gave me 8 miles for the day.

This is an excellent tour. Really a variety of sights. I did not think I would be interested in the Delta Works but it was fascinating!

I did this tour in September of this year, and I agree with Pam. There is really not much up and down stairs. Some museums have staircases such as the Van Gogh and Rjiksmuseum, but there are also elevators. In Amsterdam, on our own, we went to the Church of Our Lord in the Attic, which is one of the “hidden churches”, and there were lots of steep staircases, so i would avoid that. I believe that all of the hotels had elevators, though not necessarily speedy ones. I think with a word to your tour guide that you would easily navigated this tour. It is a great tour, as Pam said. Because we went in the fall, we went to the Alsmeer Flower Auction, rather than Keukenhof.

Thanks for the replies. I have arthritis and a bad knee. P.T. got me in shape for a WONDERFUL RS tour of Eastern France last spring. That has a few less 'bars' of strenuousness than the Hol/Belgium tour. I was fine for that. Did I mention, I'm 86? :-)

"Did I mention, I'm 86? :-)"

Hahaha!! That gives this 73-year-old some hope!

I've not done Eastern France so unable to compare for you but this would be a fairly easy tour to opt out of activities if your knee is acting up. There are only 3 transit days which are the tour days that are hard to opt out of. The transit day from Ghent to Bruges is a full day doing the WWI sites, Bruges to Delft are the Delta Works sites and if you didn't want to walk to the outdoor dike area before you get to the other site you could easily opt out there. Delft to Amsterdam is the Keukenhof day which you can take at your own pace for the gardens.