4 Best Ways To Get To Kroller Muller Museum From Amsterdam

1. Public Transportation

A trip to the Kroller Muller Museum in the National Park De Hoge Veluwe takes about 90 minutes.

This is the quickest way to get there:

1. You take an Intercity train from Amsterdam Central Station to Amersfoort. This takes about 30 minutes.
2. In Amersfoort, you transfer on a local train towards Ede-Wageningen or Barneveld Zuid. They go up to 4x per hour. Check out from NS (the yellow poles), and check in again at the Blue Pole (see image) since you’re changing operators here.
3. You disembark at the “Barneveld Centrum” train station. This takes about 15 minutes. When you exit the train station, don’t forget to check out first. The poles are near the exit. 
4. Then, cross the roads, and within a few minutes, you can take the bus to Otterlo (bus 105 > direction Arnhem). The bus journey takes 20 minutes and takes you through a lovely Dutch landscape.
5. Exit at the stop “Rotonde Otterlo.” Wait at the same stop.
6. Change here in Otterlo to bus 106 to the museum. The bus is more like a minivan.
7. At the entrance to the park, the bus is stopped for a ticket check. The national park charges admission. Please don’t be that person who did not already purchase a ticket (you can get one here) since this speeds up the process.
8. You exit the bus at the “Kroller Moller Museum,” almost before the museum.

You can take this route twice per hour. I took this route myself recently, and it worked like a charm. Everything went on time, and all connections were easy.

Alternatively, you can also take a train to Ede-Wageningen via Utrecht on a direct train from Amsterdam. You save one transfer if you do this. But this route is about 10 minutes longer than the one I mentioned above, and a little more expensive (a few euros).

Once you get to Ede-Wageningen, you take the bus to Otterlo (bus 108 > direction Apeldoorn), exit at the “Rotonde Otterlo” stop, then transfer to the same 106 bus. This route is also possible twice an hour.

Either way, visiting the Kröller-Müller museum is a do-able day trip from Amsterdam.

Travel planners

Most people use two different planners for planning their trip by public transport in the Netherlands. They’re

1. Google Maps
2. 9292.nl

I usually like Google Maps better, especially in city environments like Amsterdam. But in this case, 9292.nl has the better travel advice. The route over Barneveld is not mentioned in Google Maps. The Google Maps route makes it unnecessarily longer and more expensive.

How to Buy Public Transportation Tickets to the Museum?

For this route, it is very straightforward. Since all legs of the journey are short, I would advise traveling 2nd class (the standard class on the trains) instead of first class. And when you travel 2nd class with OVpay, you no longer need to buy tickets. How convenient is that?

How does this work?

• When you go to the platforms, you tap a contactless Debit or Credit card at the ticket gates inside Amsterdam Central Station.
• In Amersfoort, you transfer train operators. On the platform, two (2) check-in/check-out poles are next to each other to transfer passengers. You tab out at the yellow one first (NS). Then, you tap the blue one to check in for the next leg. See the photo.
• When you arrive in Barneveld-Centrum, you tab your card at one of the poles in front of the station.
• Once you board the bus in Barneveld, you tap the reader upon boarding.
• You tap out when you exit. You repeat these exact steps on transferring bus 106 into the park.

It sounds a little complicated. I get that. But it’s a quick process; it’s super easy once you get the hang of it. It ensures you pay the lowest possible price without dealing with different tickets.

Back to Amsterdam, you take the same route in reverse.

Locals tip: You’re not bound by exact departure times. If you miss a connection, you can take the next one.

The total price for a journey is about €20 per person one-way.

PS: So what are those messages about you need to take a taxi or bike? For example, I saw this review: “From the “Otterlo Rotonde” stop, you can walk to the National Park entrance (15 minutes). But from there, it’s another 2 miles / 3 kilometers to the museum’s entrance.“

But this is incorrect information (unless they traveled on a Sunday). You can walk from that stop and take a bicycle or taxi. But you can just as quickly transfer to the 106 bus from that stop and be taken straight to the museum’s entrance without walking, biking, or using any taxi.

So the answer is you can get to the park by bus to the museum’s front door. But keep in mind on Sundays, services are more limited. It’s best to avoid visiting on a Sunday if you travel by public transportation.