• Ghent is the one nobody expects. It has everything Bruges has — the canals, the guild houses, the belfry — but sixty thousand students live here, so it's a real working city rather than a museum of itself. The row of medieval merchant houses along the Graslei is one of the great views in Europe and the architecture reminds me of Hogwarts! Truly, this city is a gem. 

  • Our included excursion is a guided walk through the medieval centre. The castle, the canal-side guild houses, and St Bavo's Cathedral, which holds the Ghent Altarpiece — the Van Eyck masterpiece that has been stolen more times than any other artwork in history. We finish at the Castle of the Counts, a genuine moated fortress from 1180 in the middle of the city, and you can either climb it or take the extra free time. Your call.
  • In the afternoon an optional excursion to fairytale Bruges! Cobbled lanes, swans on the canals, muti-colored houses of the most beautiful architecture, and a Michelangelo in a quiet church that most visitors walk straight past. There's a guided walk and then free time, which is what Bruges deserves. Buy the chocolate and waffles. Buy more than you think you need.

We sail southwest into Zeeland, a province made of islands and sea walls where the Dutch have been arguing with the ocean for eight hundred years. Middelburg is its capital and it's a charming, classic Dutch town. There's a vast abbey complex at its heart and a tower called the Lange Jan you can see from anywhere in the province.

• Our included excursion is a guided walk through Middelburg — the Markt, the Gothic town hall, the abbey, and the canals. This was one of the seats of the Dutch East India Company, and the wealth is still visible in the doorways. The whole center is compact and walkable, and it is almost entirely free of crowds. 
• Then optional tour Veere, and Veere is a jewel. Fifteen hundred people live here now. In the 1500s it was the port where all Scottish wool entered the continent, and the Scottish merchants' houses are still standing on the quay with their names on them. There's a harbour, a great church far too big for the town, and the Campveerse Toren watching the water. The shopping here is absolutely fantastic! Lots of lovely, family run shops!

We're moored at Dordrecht, the oldest city in Holland — it got its city rights in 1220 and made its money where three rivers meet. 

• Our optional excursion this morning is Kinderdijk — nineteen windmills standing in a row across the polder, built in the 1740s and still doing the job they were built for. It's a UNESCO site and the only way it makes any sense is from the water, so we take a canal cruise through the middle of them and go inside one of the mills to see how a family actually lived in there. This is the Holland in your head, and it's real.
• And then, Keukenhof. Seven million bulbs on land that was once a countess's kitchen garden — tulips, daffodils, hyacinths, muscari, alliums, fritillaria, planted in layers so something is always at its peak. Bikes are available for anyone who wants them, on marked routes out through the bulb fields, at your own pace, stopping for as many photos as you like! No one hurrying you along. Everyone else has free time in the gardens. 

• We wake back in Amsterdam where it started. Breakfast on board, and transfers arranged to get you where you're going.

  • Schiphol is one of the best-connected airports in Europe, so flying home is easy. But plenty of people add a few days on either end, and we'd encourage it — Amsterdam rewards a second look, and this time you'll know what you're looking at.
  • Tot ziens for now! Eight days of flower fields, windmills, cheese markets, cobblestones, chocolate, beer and frites — and a true bucketlist trip. I cannot wait to do this with you.