Day Trips from Amsterdam

Delft is the picture postcard Dutch city. Walk along the Oude Vest and it's easy to imagine the eighteenth century. It has a beautiful market square with a renaissance city hall. Two huge churches, of which the Oude Kerk has the magnificant (and moving) grave of William of Orange, the founding father of the present-day Netherlands.
Utrecht is totally different. An even impressive historical centre, but on a larger scale, busier and much less touristy. It's only half an hour from Amsterdam.
And on the way to Delft, you can always break your journey for Leiden. After Amsterdam the largest historical city centre of the Netherlands. The beautiful Rapenburg canal. The intimate neighbourhood around the Pieterskerk. The lively market on Wednesdays and Saturdays along the River Rhine behind the city hall. And the Pilgrim Fathers Museum (www.leidenamericanpilgrimmuseum.org/index.htm) in case you're interested in that part of American history.

Only been to Delft, it was a lovely, low key day. You want to also check out localbus.nl to go out into the country. Their website has three different routes. If you can go on a Wednesday, the cheese market in Edam was as local as you can get. Go early for a front row seat, it gets crowded.

For day trips use the perfect public transport planner http://9292.nl/en# It does trains, metros, trams, buses and ferries. It's great fun to take the river ferry from Dordrecht (a very underrated city) to Kinderdijk (that famous windmill complex).

Good Morning Tom,

You might consider a short (75 - 90 minute) train ride to the Nijmegen/Arnhem area. Lots of WW2 history (A bridge Too Far) as well as an awesome national park and open air museum where their is a wonderful collection of paintings by Van Gogh.

We took the waterland bus to Edam and saw the cheese market and totally dug it! My husband LOVED the cheese we got there!!

We then rented bikes and went to Volendam and Monnickendam, then back to Edam.

Kim

We also really liked our day with the Waterland bus pass...a great value in my book. Easy schedules and connections allow you to go wherever, whenever you like. We went to Monnickendam, Volendam, Marken and Edam on our daytrip. Have fun.

Thank you for asking this question! It has helped me too :)

Thanks for everyone's input. You gave us some good options! Cheers!