Canals to Clifftops: A 3-Day Winter Nature & Hiking Escape Around Amsterdam

The day opens with that particular Amsterdam quiet: the soft click of bike chains, the smell of espresso drifting out of Baarsjesweg, your breath clouding the air as the city shakes off the dark. You warm your hands around a mug at Land of Ride, already thinking about sand under your boots. By late morning, the Rijksmuseum’s grand atrium swallows you whole—polished stone underfoot, the hush of people moving between Dutch masters and model ships—before you slip back out, past Museumplein’s winter trees, to trade oil paint for real sky. The tempo changes on the train to the coast, city blocks giving way to flat, waterlogged fields and then the rolling forms of the Amsterdamse Waterleidingduinen. Out there, the soundscape is different: wind in marram grass, the dry rasp of sand under your soles, fallow deer stepping through pale, winter-bare trees. You push further into the North Holland Dune Reserve, where forest gives way to higher ridges and the North Sea announces itself as a low, constant roar. By the time you reach Zuid-Kennemerland at the end of the day, the light is bruised and golden, ponies and deer silhouettes against the dunes. You ride the train back to Amsterdam tired and salty, the city’s warmth feeling earned, and fall asleep already thinking about steeper dunes tomorrow.

You wake with a faint ache in your calves and the taste of last night’s wine still lingering, but the city outside is calm: canal water flat as glass, a few early cyclists hunched against the cold. Today trades city edges for something wilder—Schoorl’s dune system, the tallest in the country. After a warm, late breakfast in De Pijp, you slip onto a train and then a bus, watching the landscape shift from brick to bare trees and finally to sand and pine. Schoorlse Duinen rises up like a soft, pale wall against the flat land, and the famous Duintrap staircase bites immediately into your legs—wooden steps, the grain rough under your hand as you steady yourself. At the top, it’s all ridgelines and heather, the wind louder than any city traffic. Trails loop through Buitencentrum Schoorlse Duinen’s network of paths and into quieter hiking areas, where the smell of pine needles and cold earth is almost meditative. By late afternoon you’re back on the train, cheeks wind-burned and hair full of sand, heading toward a long, glowing dinner and a different kind of warmth. The day closes not with waves but with clinking glasses and candlelight, your body pleasantly used up and your mind already curious about tomorrow’s mix of coastal and forest trails.

Haarlem wakes up slower than Amsterdam: church bells, the scrape of chairs on old stone floors, the smell of butter and croissants drifting down narrow streets. You start the day with serious coffee in a former clandestine club, then let the train pull you back toward the coast—this time aiming for Zuid-Kennemerland’s quieter corners and the layered dune systems that define the Hollandse Duinen. The rhythm is familiar now: train, trailhead, the first crunch of sand under boot, the mind clearing as the city falls away. By midday you’re threading between lakes and grazing cattle in Midden Herenduin, the wind catching your jacket hood and whipping stray hair into your eyes. Later, Hollandse Duinen stretches out soft and soothing, a long, coastal exhale where forest, dunes, and sea all share the same salt-tinged air. In the afternoon you turn inland to the Cape Forests and the Outlook Tower De Kaap, climbing through pine-scented paths to a structure that finally gives you that clifftop feeling—treetops at eye level, the flat Dutch landscape rolling out below like a map. The day ends back in Amsterdam’s center: a last lingering dinner, a high-up look at the city from A’DAM Lookout, and a quiet coffee in a neighborhood bar that feels like a living room. It’s a soft landing, all reflections—on water, in glass, in your own pleasantly tired body.