I'm a tulip tragic, and I just found the best way to see the Netherlands in spring

You don't come on a Netherlands river cruise to be awed by vertiginous riverbanks bejewelled with castles and grand chateaus - you might choose a cruise on the Moselle, or the Danube, or further up the Rhine for that. Rather than one show-stealing river through several countries, this seven-night cruise in a famously flat land takes you along 18 waterways and, apart from a one-day foray into Belgium, is a full immersion in things Dutch.

We're talking gouda and stroopwafel; dykes and windmills; Dutch masters and history for days ... and, perhaps most of all for many of those on board, tulips. This is a seasonal cruise, which culminates in a spectacular spring day at the world's biggest tulip display, the Keukenhof Gardens at Lisse.

And the Dutch have plenty of palaces and castles, too, by the way. It still has a royal family after all. They're just not found on show-off, vineyard-draped, undulating riverbanks, and I'm OK with that.

At the briefing on our first evening, Cathy Lasouski, our cruise director, reports there are 155 passengers from eight countries on the Scenic Pearl. My partner and I are among just five Australians on this Australian-owned river ship. The biggest contingent, at 67, are American; 29 are from Canada and 50 from Britain, whose capital city is less than a 90-minute flight from Amsterdam. The world order in 2026 is all shook up, but the Scenic Pearl won't hear of it. Cathy, a warm and ebullient Canadian, declares a golden rule. "We never talk about sex, religion and politics on our voyages," she says. "We are one international family."

We have met our butler, Angelo, who hails from Greece and multitasks as a waiter in the fine-dining Italian restaurant Portobellos, where every passenger gets to dine once during the cruise. Our turn is on the very first night. Having landed at Schiphol airport from Sydney early that morning and spent the day walking around Amsterdam, we are exhausted, but hungry, too. And who can decline a formal invitation waiting in your suite promising an "evening to remember"? It's a five-course menu, with wine pairings, of Italian regional classics done well - the gnocchi with black truffle is a standout. Bleary eyed as we are, we enjoy the company of our table of eight before scooting off to bed.

The Scenic Pearl pulls away from Amsterdam at midnight, and sails southward for the next seven hours while we slumber in our balcony suite on the Sapphire deck. About 7am, the ship pulls into the first of our six port stops, all of them deeply historic and picturesque towns and cities that make up for any lack of dramatic scenery on the way.

Dordrecht in South Holland province is on an island, hemmed by five rivers and intersected by slender waterways. From the sun deck of the Pearl, we see our first windmill in the near distance, shooting up incongruously amid workaday low-rise buildings. Later in the day we'll walk by it, during an hours-long amble around the 11th-century merchant town that includes a pitstop at the canalside Centre Ville grand cafe, where we have beer first brewed in 1074 by knights-turned-monks in Belgium.

But first we have a shore excursion to Gouda. The coach trip there is well below sea level through a "polder" - reclaimed land that 100 years ago was very swampy, but is now "quite liveable", Ruth, our local tour guide, tells us. "We are the drain of Europe," she says of her country. (An engaging commentator, Ruth also shares that a speaker of the Dutch language sounds like a cat with a hairball stuck in their throat.)

On the 45-minute drive, we even pass by the country's lowest point of all, 6.7 metres below sea level, a nadir marked by a seven-metre high monument depicting a measuring gauge. It's not all bad being so damp. For centuries cows have thrived on the verdant grasses in these parts and produced high quality milk perfect for high quality, world-famous cheese, which we are about to get stuck in to.

In Gouda, there are tulips growing like daisies on the walk from the bus towards the historic centre. It's a Thursday in springtime so we'll catch the Gouda Cheese Market, a scene that's been repeating itself for 600 years. These days the olde worlde bits - which involve horse-drawn carts, women in bonnets and clogs, and men in long coats performing "handjeklap", a bargaining ritual involving lots of curious hand-slapping - are a re-enactment that brings in the tourists.

Before we reach the action, there's a stop at 't Kaaswinkeltje cheese shop; here colourful, glossy wheels of gouda are stacked floor to ceiling and the tasting opportunities of variously flavoured goudas are exceedingly generous. We buy some vacuum-packed to take away, and more again at the busy market square, where we also eat freshly made stroopwafels, all gooey, chewy, warm and sweet.

Later, wandering the old town, we stumble upon small square plaques embedded in canalside footpaths out the front of charming terraces. They commemorate each member of the Jewish families that once lived in these houses, before they were transported to Nazi concentration camps.

One's heart might be newly in love with stroopwafels, but it bleeds.

Our port stop on day three, the Zeeland fishing village of Bruinisse, or "Bru", is famous most of all for its mussels. Unfortunately, on a wander through the eerily quiet, immaculately kept town, we fail to find anywhere we might eat them. Instead, we order takeaway fish and chips from the quayside Bru 17 viswinkel (fish shop) and, as we're tucking in at an outdoor table, the penny drops that Bru 17 also has a lovely visrestaurant right next door, with mussels (in green sauce) on the menu.

At least we get to eat some oysters, back on the ship in the Panorama lounge, where they are being freshly shucked by members of a generations-old family business from Yerseke, the nation's oyster capital less than an hour from here. The estuarine Zeeland creuse oysters are plump, briny and perfect with a squeeze of lemon and glass of champagne.

That evening, on the way to Antwerp in Belgium, it's evident we're closing in on the second largest port in Europe. In the Pearl's Crystal Dining restaurant, between my entree of goat cheese souffle and a main of john dory fillet, we sail by a nuclear power station. In the day's dying light, transmission towers, wires, wind turbines, and giant gantries are silhouetted against the sky. Such heavily industrial scenery is light years from typical fairytale European river cruising, but it's a spectacle in its own right.

In the Panorama lounge after dinner, spectacles of a different kind unfold. Enrichment manager Lucie Duskova has "Name that Tune" trivia lined up for tonight's entertainment. We team up with French Canadian couple Denis and Micheline, our cruise buddies, and do quite well. The bar staff roam the lounge leaving no empty glass unattended, which may explain why so many people are happy to get up and do the chicken dance, with a conga-line chaser to Kylie Minogue's Locomotion.

It's a funny, daggy end to a jam-packed day and there are still many ahead. Tomorrow, we join an excursion from Antwerp to Ghent for a tour of the medieval city with another excellent local guide, the personable, long-haired Pieter. In the free time afterwards, we line up in St Bava's Cathedral to be wonderstruck by the most stolen artwork in history, 15th-century altarpiece The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb. With the Pearl departing at 12.45pm we're against the clock, with just time enough for an odd but fitting lunch combo - Belgian waffles dusted with icing sugar and more Belgian beer, this one a pale ale still made within the walls of a Trappist monk abbey.

Back in the Netherlands at Hoorn in North Holland, the Pearl docks at a jigsaw-puzzle-pretty, warehouse-lined wharf, and the ship's fleet of electric bikes come out. With another local guide, Mark, we cycle beyond the city limits into the West Frisian countryside, up close to Lake IJssel, the Netherlands' largest, formed from the construction of a dyke to keep the destructive force of the North Sea at bay.

"When I go running or biking, I always go here to the dyke and everyday it is different, the sunlight on the water ... and every time I like it," says Mark. He feels the same about tulips. "I am living here my whole life, over 60 years, and every year it is special to see them flowering."

In what seems a wink, five nights are up and the Pearl is back in Amsterdam for the cruise's final two nights. And we are going out in a double-whammy detonation of colour.

About 10 minutes after the ship ties up, passengers are disembarking and climbing back onto buses for a signature Scenic Enrich experience. It's at a 19th-century former gasworks where the walls soar 17 metres high - the perfect canvas for a cutting-edge digital light show. Fabrique des Lumieres depicts the artworks of the Dutch masters as a soundtrack of classical music booms through the cavernous, 67-metre-long gallery. The works of Vermeer, Van Gogh, Rembrandt and more appear in a kaleidoscopic explosion all over the walls and ceilings. All the while, the French champagne flows. Rather than being tipsy, though, it feels like I might be tripping.

Come 10am the next day, we're amid 7 million blooming bulbs planted across 32 colour-saturated hectares at Keukenhof, which describes itself as the most beautiful spring garden in the world.

You can climb a windmill for a view; stroll the pathways around endless, artfully planted flower beds; take a boat ride along a canal through the tulip fields that surround Keukenhof; and bugger your phone battery taking endless videos and photos.

Really, it's a magnificent way to wrap up a river cruise in the Netherlands. Things could hardly be more Dutch. Or beautiful.

The writer travelled courtesy of Scenic Cruises