Fantastic service, food, and accommodations. Very organized both on board and on shore. Included tours were enjoyable and informative. The Hoorn homestead visit was great. We did some optionals: Haarlem, Agriport, Open Air Museum, Brussels. All were worthwhile. My only complaint with the optionals is that it wasn't entirely clear when we were signing up ahead of time that some conflicted with the included tours (you couldn't do both). Luckily, we realized this ahead of time and canceled some of the optionals (and received a refund). We chose to go to Bruge (rather than Ghent), which was beautiful.

Warning: Amsterdam museums are ridiculously busy, especially on Saturday, which is when we were there at the beginning and end of the cruise. We waited 2 hours on the day of arrival to get into the Anne Frank House. We bought tickets ahead for the Rijkmuseum (via the ship concierge) for the tail end of the cruise (return to Amsterdam). I thought we'd have time to go to the Van Gogh Museum after, but without tickets, we would have had to wait 2 hours in line, and we didn't have that much time. You can buy tickets ahead for most places (although the Anne Frank tickets sell out quickly), but you may be taking a risk there, too. Our itinerary was changed late in the game: our Keukenhof tour was moved from the last day of the cruise to the first, to avoid an event that was was happening there. No problem for us, but some people had Anne Frank tickets and had to then decide whether to skip Anne Frank or skip Keukenhof.

We extended the tour to the Hague, spending one day there and taking a tram the next day from our hotel to Delft. It was nice to have these two quiet days to ourselves, and we packed a lot in. No need to do the optional Delft tour during the cruise if you are doing this extension, as it is easy to get to Delft from the Hague. Read more