At half past six on a late-April morning the canal ring is close to empty, the water flat as glass and most of the bikes still chained up. Amsterdam in April is a walker's month, provided you carry a waterproof. Showers blow through often and the wind can be sharp, but the tulips are out, in town and in the fields around Lisse.
Through April the Tulp Festival puts tulips in tubs and beds at more than a hundred spots across the city under the motto "a tulip for every Amsterdammer". You will pass them on bridges and squares without trying. For a proper tulip walk, start at the Hortus Botanicus on Plantage Middenlaan, which charges admission, then cross the canal belt to the Rijksmuseum gardens and the Vondelpark beyond. The street displays cost nothing.
For the fields, go to Lisse. The eight-kilometre Flower Walk starts and ends at Museum De Zwarte Tulp and runs mostly on paved paths, past bulb fields and through the woods of the Keukenhof estate. Tulips usually peak from mid to late April, and with luck the last hyacinths are still flowering alongside them. Keep to the paths. Growers ask walkers to stay out of the fields, because trampled plants mean ruined bulbs.
King's Day falls on 27 April, or on the Saturday before when the 27th is a Sunday. The whole city empties its attics onto the pavements for the vrijmarkt, the street-wide free market, and orange is the dress code. Walk it in the morning, in flat shoes for the cobbles. In the Vondelpark only children sell, from old toys and books to songs played for coins, and it is at its best before lunch. By mid-afternoon the canal belt is shoulder to shoulder, and the bridges, with party boats jammed underneath, are where the crowd stops moving.