Holland cycling tour: Lisse tulip fields

This easy bike tour rides around the tulip fields near the famous Keukenhof gardens. The popular “Dutch Flower Route” is a loop ride that hits many highlights of the area besides just tulips, including small villages, sand dunes and the beach. On weekends and holidays, this route can be very busy with both cyclist and pedestrians. 

We did this cycling tour as part of our spring break cycling holiday in Holland.

Location

This cycling route is location near Lisse and the Keukenhof gardens, southwest of Amsterdam. Your starting point depends on how you arrive to the area and/or where you rent bikes. 

Cycling route map

The Dutch Flower Route, aka Bloemenroute, is a 35 km loop as shown below. It passes by many tulip fields, rides through the town Lisse, and visits the nearby beach. The FlowerTour.nl website has a good description of this route, with links to various highlights and tourist attractions along the way. Download this brochure here. View an interactive map on Komoot.

Alternate flower route

We intended to follow this route exactly. But I didn’t like a few sections – not enough tulips. So I customized this route as we went, chasing tulip fields we saw off our route. The route below (see on Komoot) is what we did on our most recent trip. 

We did our route counterclockwise, so we saw the tulips first and the beach last. We stopped in Noordwijkhout for lunch at the town square – lots of restaurants circling the town square.

Shorter cycling routes

When we visited Keukenhof with our small children, we rented bikes from the Rent-a-bike van Dam, which is located in the Keukenhof parking lot. They gave us this map with suggested routes. We did the purple route, which was a good distance for our kids. If you are not on e-Bikes, these are more reasonable distances for casual cyclists.

• Purple route 4 – about 9 km – see route map
• Orange route 2 – about 12 km – see route map

Getting there

By train: If you are renting bikes at Keukenhof, take a bus to the Lisse, Keukenhof stop. How you get to this bus stop depends on your starting point.

By car: If you are renting bikes, park at your selected bike rental shop, as outlined below. If you brought your bikes with your car, you can park at Keukenhof (Stationsweg 166A, 2161 AM Lisse, Netherlands), but you may be stuck in a long line of cars waiting to park. Since you will be biking anyway, you can park elsewhere on the route that is less crowded. For example, you could park in Lisse on Grachtweg or Meer en Houtplein. 

Renting bikes

We rented bikes from LemonBike at their Noordwijk location (Nieuwe Offemweg 2A, Noordwijk), which was very convenient. They have free parking (but get there early to get a spot) and it’s a short ride to join the Dutch Flower Route. They have a wide assortment of bikes including cargo bikes, bikes with child carriers, children’s bikes, tandems (also with children), etc. Best to reserve online a week in advance.

If you are visiting Keukenhof, you can rent bikes at the Keukenhof parking lot. You can reserve online but you must pick up your bike before 12:30. I suggest picking up your bike first thing before your park visit and locking the bike at the entrance. Then the bike is ready for you after your park visit. 

Tips for the route

The part near the Keukenhof parking is very busy – full of cars, bikes and walkers. I found this part difficult to navigate safely and stressful. But it’s hard to avoid and still catch most of the tulip fields.

If you stop at the tulip fields for pictures, please do not walk into the fields. There are often signs asking you not to do this, but lots of people do it anyway. As an alternative, a few farms allow to pay an entrance fee then you can enter their fields and take as many pics as you like. Some allow tulip picking. Two along this route are The Tulip Barn and De Tulperij. 

Photos of the route