A child aged 4 to 11 travels anywhere on the Dutch rail network, all day, for 2.50 euro.
That is the Railrunner, it is the 2026 price, and an accompanying adult can take up to three of them.
It changes the arithmetic of every trip below and almost nobody arriving in the Netherlands is told about it.
The Hague sits in the middle of the Randstad, which means a dozen genuinely different cities are closer to you than the far side of London is to its own centre.
Journey times below are the usual quickest services read off timetable aggregators rather than from NS itself, so treat them as approximate and check ns.nl on the day.
Delft, about fifteen minutes, and the best of them
Four trains an hour, quarter of an hour, and you are in a small walled-feeling city with canals, two enormous churches and no crowds outside the market square.
If you do one day trip, do this one.
The Vermeer Centrum at Voldersgracht 21 opens every day from 10.00 to 17.00 and costs 15 euro for an adult, 7.50 for a child of 13 to 17, 2 euro for 7 to 12 and nothing under 7, with a reduced 11 euro on a Museumkaart or CJP.
It holds no Vermeers, which is the thing to understand before you buy a ticket: it is an interpretation centre on the site of the Guild of St Luke, and the paintings themselves are at the Mauritshuis in The Hague, twenty minutes away.
The Oude and Nieuwe Kerk together are 10 euro, with reduced rates at 8 and a child ticket at 4.75, open 10.00 to 17.00 with no admission in the final fifteen minutes.
Two things about the tower: it closes a full hour before the churches, and it shuts altogether in bad weather.
The Nieuwe Kerk is also subject to renovation work, so check before you climb.
More on the town itself is in Delft.
Leiden, about twenty minutes
A university city with more canal frontage than Delft and a better bookshop-to-tourist ratio.
The draws are the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden, Naturalis and the Hortus botanicus, one of the oldest botanical gardens in Europe.
Naturalis publishes no prices on its own homepage and sells only timed tickets, so book before you travel rather than turning up.
Leiden is also the practical jumping-off point for the bulb fields.
Rotterdam, twenty to twenty-five minutes
The opposite of everything The Hague is: rebuilt, vertical, loud.
The Markthal, the Kunsthal and the Euromast are the standard list.
The one that is worth planning around is the Depot Boijmans Van Beuningen at Museumpark 24, open Tuesday to Sunday 11.00 to 17.00.
It is the whole museum store, publicly walkable, and entry is by timed slot only: “zonder tijdslot kun je het depot niet bezoeken”.
Book first.
The clever ticket most people miss is the roof-only one, valid Thursday to Saturday from 17.15, which gets you the view and the restaurant without the galleries.
Gouda, about half an hour, and only on a Thursday in season
The cheese market runs on Thursdays from 10.00 to 12.30 on the Markt in front of the Waag, and it is free.
In 2026 the season was 2 April to 27 August, with no market on Ascension Day.
Go outside those dates and you will find a pleasant square, a very good church window collection and no cheese market whatsoever, which is the single most common wasted day trip from The Hague.
Utrecht, roughly forty minutes
The Dom Tower is the tallest church tower in the Netherlands, it is open all year, and the climb is 13.50 euro for an adult and 8.50 for a child of 4 to 12.
It is a guided climb rather than a turnstile, so book.
Utrecht’s wharf-level canals, with cafes a storey below street level, are unlike anything in The Hague, and the city centre is compact enough for an afternoon.
Amsterdam, roughly fifty minutes, and an honest verdict
You live fifty minutes from Amsterdam, which means it is not a day trip, it is an evening.
Going on a Saturday in July to queue for the Rijksmuseum is the worst use of the connection.
Go on a Tuesday evening for a concert, a restaurant or a specific exhibition you have booked, and come back on a late train.
Treated that way it is one of the genuine advantages of living here.
The fares are in trains from The Hague.
The windmills: Kinderdijk, not Zaanse Schans
Zaanse Schans is north of Amsterdam and is a long way for a set of windmills.
Kinderdijk is nineteen of them in a row in a working polder, it is a UNESCO site, and it is the better trip from here.
Adults are 21 euro, children of 4 to 12 are 9 and under-4s are free.
The opening hours split by season: 6 March to 1 November it runs 09.00 to 17.30, and from 2 November through December only 10.30 to 16.00.
You need a ticket for the visitor locations and the site recommends buying online.
Getting there involves a change and, in season, a waterbus from Rotterdam, so allow a full day rather than an afternoon.
Keukenhof, eight weeks a year
The 2027 season is 18 March to 9 May, open 08.00 to 19.00 with the entrance closing at 18.15, at Stationsweg 166A in Lisse.
Tickets go on sale from mid-October.
That short window and the ticket release date are the two facts worth writing down, because the garden sells out on good weekends and there is no second chance until the following spring.
With children
Duinrell in Wassenaar is the closest full day out: more than 40 attractions in the park and more than 21 slides in the Tikibad, with the park typically running 10.00 to 16.00, the indoor Tikibad 10.00 to 22.00 and the outdoor pools 12.00 to 18.00.
It is twenty minutes from the city and it does not publish its prices on the pages that describe it, so price it online first.
Hoek van Holland is a beach at the mouth of the Nieuwe Waterweg where you can watch the container ships come in, and the transport has changed in a way that catches people out.
The old NS beach train is gone.
Since 31 March 2023 it has been RET metro line B to Hoek van Holland Strand, with three trains an hour and up to eight on hot days, and from The Hague you change at Schiedam Centrum.
Around 37 minutes from Rotterdam Beurs, so allow an hour or so door to door from here.
More of this is in The Hague with children, and the local beach, which is free and fifteen minutes away, is in Scheveningen and the coast.
The tickets that make it cheap
These are the 2026 consumer rates published by NS.
The Railrunner is 2.50 euro for a child travelling with an adult.
A group ticket for two or three people is 38.50 euro, which beats individual returns to Utrecht or Amsterdam for two adults.
A dog costs 3.70 euro for the day, a bicycle 8.50 off-peak, and the Intercity Direct and ICE surcharge is 3.20 euro.
Buying a paper ticket at a machine or counter adds 1.60 euro to the price, so use a card or the app.
If you travel off-peak at all regularly, NS Flex Dal Voordeel at 6.35 euro a month buys 40% off outside rush hours and pays for itself in about one return trip to Rotterdam.
Weekend Vrij is 39.50 a month and Dal Vrij 127.95.
The Holland Travel Ticket is the one to know for a big day out: 54 euro for off-peak use, valid after 09.00 on weekdays, or 79 euro for the whole day, covering train, bus, tram, metro and ferry nationwide until 04.00 the following morning.
Second class only and non-refundable.
For two people going to three cities it is very good value; for one person going to Delft it is absurd.
How the payment side works is in the OV-chipkaart and OVpay.
The four nearest places, which are not day trips at all
Rijswijk, Voorburg, Leidschendam and Zoetermeer are ten to twenty minutes out and are where Hague residents actually go on a Saturday, for the malls, the woods and the swimming pools rather than for sightseeing.
Treat them as extensions of the city.
Tour operators and guides in The Hague will sell you a packaged version of most of the above.
You do not need one for any destination on this page; every one of them is a station and a walk.
If the weather has closed in, a rainy day in The Hague is cheaper than a wet day in Gouda, and the full list of what is on your own doorstep is in twenty things to do in The Hague.
Sources
- NS consumer rates 2026 (ns.nl/en/service-and-contact/payment/consumer-rates), read 11 September 2026: “Railrunner: 2.50”; “Group ticket (2-3 people): 38.50”; “Day ticket dog: 3.70”; “Bicycle ticket off-peak: 8.50”; “ICE/IC Direct surcharge: 3.20”; “A surcharge of 1,60 applies when you buy these products as a paper ticket at the NS Tickets & Service shop / NS Ticket Machine”; NS Flex Dal Voordeel 6.35 per month, Weekend Vrij 39.50, Dal Vrij 127.95, Altijd Vrij 399.95
- Holland Travel Ticket (connexxion.nl/en/shop/tickets/holland-travel-ticket): “Free travel during off-peak hours: 54.00 (valid after 9.00 hrs on working days)”; all-day version 79.00; “the ticket is valid from check-in until the end of the day’s timetable (04.00 hours next morning)”; “only valid in 2nd class”; “no refund possible”; valid on bus, train, tram, metro and ferry, with supplements for Intercity Direct and ICE International
- Vermeer Centrum Delft (vermeerdelft.nl): “Openingstijden, elke dag van 10.00-17.00 uur”; “Volwassenen 15,00”, “Kinderen 13 t/m 18 jaar 7,50”, “Kinderen 7 t/m 12 jaar 2,00”, 0 to 6 free; Museumkaart, Vriendenloterij VIP and CJP Cultuurkaart at 11,00; Voldersgracht 21
- Oude en Nieuwe Kerk Delft (oudeennieuwekerkdelft.nl/bezoek/prijzen-en-tijden/): hours “10.00-17.00”; “15 min. voor sluitingstijd worden er geen bezoekers meer toegelaten tot de kerken. De toren sluit een uur eerder dan de kerken”; “de toren kan i.v.m weersomstandigheden gesloten zijn”; “Beide Kerken, 10.00 / 8.00 / 4.75”. The same site carries a page on the Nieuwe Kerk renovation, which is why the tower should be checked before travelling
- Depot Boijmans Van Beuningen (boijmans.nl/depot): “Dinsdag t/m zondag 11:00-17:00”; “Museumpark 24, Rotterdam”; “Zonder tijdslot kun je het depot niet bezoeken”; ticket types including “Entree dak Depot (do t/m za vanaf 17.15)”. Prices are not published on that page and are not quoted here. Naturalis in Leiden likewise publishes no price on its homepage and sells timed tickets only
- Goudse Kaasmarkt (goudsekaasmarkt.com/agenda): “op elke donderdag van 2 april 2026 tot en met 27 augustus 2026”; “tussen 10:00 uur en 12:30 uur”; “op 14 mei vindt er geen Kaasmarkt plaats in verband met Hemelvaartsdag”; free, on the Markt in front of De Waag. No 2027 dates are published
- Domtoren Utrecht (domtoren.nl): “Volwassene 13,50”; “Kind 4-12 jaar 8,50”; “De Domtoren is het hele jaar geopend”; tickets through the online shop or the Utrecht Winkel and VVV counter
- Kinderdijk (kinderdijk.nl/ticket-informatie/ and /openingstijden/): “Volwassene 21”, “Kind 4 t/m 12 jaar 9”, under 4 free; “6 maart t/m 1 november-09.00-17.30 uur” and “2 november t/m december-10.30-16.00 uur”; “om toegang te krijgen tot de bezoeklocaties in Kinderdijk heb je een ticket nodig”
- Keukenhof (keukenhof.nl/en/): “Keukenhof will be open from March 18 to May 9, 2027”; hours “8:00 AM-7:00 PM” with the entrance closing at 6:15 PM; “Tickets for Keukenhof 2027 are available from mid-October via www.keukenhof.nl”; Stationsweg 166A, 2161 AM Lisse. The 2027 ticket price is not yet published and is not stated
- Duinrell (duinrell.nl): on the day checked, “Attractiepark 10:00-16:00”, “Tikibad binnen 10:00-22:00”, “Tikibad buiten 12:00-18:00”; “Attractiepark, meer dan 40 attracties” and “Tikibad, meer dan 21 glijbanen”. Prices are not published on the pages reached and are not quoted
- Hoek van Holland Strand: RET (corporate.ret.nl) on the station opening on 31 March 2023 on metro line B, with three trains an hour in the daytime, two in the evening and up to eight on hot days, and roughly 37 minutes from Rotterdam Beurs. The station replaced the former NS service and sits further west than the original
- Journey times from Den Haag Centraal to Delft, Leiden, Rotterdam, Gouda, Utrecht and Amsterdam are the usual quickest services as listed by timetable aggregators including Rome2Rio and Trainline, not by NS itself, and are given as approximate. Check the NS journey planner for the day you travel
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