Day trips from Amsterdam

So you are looking for a ready made guided tour that will take you somewhere that isn't touristy?

Good luck squaring that circle.

Well, I really liked Zaanse Schans. Touristy? Well, yes, but most touristy places are touristy for a reason.

It's also charming, picturesque, and fun. I think, in mid-October, it probably won't be overrun with tourists. It was fairly quiet when we were there at the beginning of November.

I love Haarlem, a beautiful town just 20 miles up via train. Great food, explore the church and the art.

Try localbus.nl. They have 3 different routes, all in the countryside, all fun. We did route #3. The cheese market goes every Wednesday in Edam. We purchased the tickets at the main train station. It is a bus though, on the upper floor. Just follow Rick’s description in his guidebook. It was very easy.

Badger makes a good point, commercial tours will almost inevitably take you to "touristy" places. I haven't been to those you mentioned, but presumably there are reasons for their popularity. I'd suggest a day or part-day in Haarlem, a short easy train ride from Amsterdam, with a great church and market square, the Frans Hals Museum, canals, an old windmill, and other worthwhile sights. I think it checks your boxes, except maybe for boat trips. But you could take a canal trip in Amsterdam that includes the harbor.

Haarlem is another great day trip we did. Where I messed up was I didn’t prebook the Corrie Ten Boom museum. But we did see the other sights mentioned. Easy train ride

I really enjoyed my day trips to den Haag and Leiden (especially Leiden). I also enjoyed Hoorn - my friend and I took a short boat cruise throughout the harbor. And in 2018, the windmills were open - I really enjoyed walking through them and seeing how authentic they were.

I would also suggest Zaanse Schans, which had some beautiful quaint houses and very well-preserved windmills that you could walk through. It did not seem touristy to me at all (in fact, I found Haarlem to be more touristy). I went with a friend who lives near there so she took me through it, but I would recommend going there even on your own.

It could be that you could hire a private guide to take you to the places you want to see, or explain to them your thoughts and they come up with an itinerary. If you check Tours By Locals, you might see something that interests you, or someone you could connect with to take you where you want to go. For our upcoming trip, I had some specific interests, but also wanted a general overview of the city (Brussels). I found a guide who was able to combine two of her regular tours to suit our interests. Some tours are expensive, but her rates were definitely within what I consider to be reasonable. We'll see next week when we go!

It is so easy to take the same train from Amsterdam to Haarlem, The Hague, Delft, Leiden, Rotterdam. Easy. We used this method on our first trip to the Netherlands and then stayed in Leiden on the next trip and again explored by train. We had also done the Zanse Schans, Volendam touron our first trip which was not for us.
For the best windmills, go to Rotterdam, take a river boat to Kinderdijk to see 19 windmills in their original locations.Have your hotel's concierge help you out with this plan.

It's so easy to get around the area on public transportation and most people speak moderate to very fluent English. Unless you yourselves are a small group who want the logistics help, you don't need a tour, only a good guide book.