The first place that comes to mind in the Netherlands after Amsterdam: a village of Zaandam, Zaanse Schans! Actually, when you go you'll understand better that this place has little to do with the villages we know. It's like a film set! 🏡🏡
Even though village life still goes on here today, the scene is very different from what we're used to 😇 Well-kept gardens in front of the houses, one lovely decoration after another, little streams, bridges and tyre swings... Walking along the carefully kept streets gives you a completely different feeling. Then.. Windmills in front of us.. As I said, it gives you the thrill of arriving on an 18th-century film set!
This area, known as the Zaan region, very close to Amsterdam, an old natural trading area with canals and windmills, was reshaped with a 1946 plan by the architect Jaap Schipper, who was seriously concerned about the Netherlands of that time and its cultural heritage. With the mills, the workshops for the wooden shoes called clogs, and the houses of cheese makers, he in fact put Dutch history under protection. From 1961 onwards, Zaan-style wooden houses were moved by vehicles and taken across bridges.. And the canals broke away completely from their commercial feel and turned into a fairytale town.
Thanks to signs that guide you all the time in the town, you can walk everywhere. We went very early, the shops were only just opening, and we watched the sunrise! We took photos... We can say we enjoyed it to the full before the tourist groups that start arriving at 9 😊
Zaanse Schans, known for its "Windmills", has 13 windmills today, some still active. The windmills were built to pump water out of areas below water level and to increase the yield of farmland. Today these mills are used in the chemical or oil industry. And partly in tourism 🙈
As you know, this lovely village has been open to tourism for a while, and what's more you can visit the mills, prepared with great care! There are windmills displayed for free and windmills you visit for a fee. The most famous of the paid mills is the one called "De Kat". Built in 1872, it used to produce pigments used in making paint. The entrance fee is €4.
We said there are also mills you can visit for free. Here's one of them, "De Huisman": smaller than the other mills, built in 1876 and now used to produce mustard.
As everywhere in the Netherlands, there are cheese factories here too. The shops that explain the stages of making cheese also sell cheese here.
In the building on the left at the entrance to the village there's a shop where you can also find information about making the Netherlands' famous wooden shoes. We loved it! Amsterdam and Marken are famous for their wooden shoes. In Amsterdam, where rain and floods are never in short supply, people started making and wearing wooden shoes so as not to slip. They even gave them a nickname: "Clogs"!
The very sound of a puddle! Of course no one wears them today, but they're sold as souvenirs and used for decoration. In this shop, which has every form, ones you can hang on the wall and ones you can wear, and where you can watch them being made, there's even a clog made of the diamonds Antwerp is famous for 💎 And it isn't only these wooden shoes in this charming shop: wooden tulips, souvenirs, guidebooks and blue-tiled porcelain...
We left the cheese shop on the right at the entrance for last, and at the very end of our tour we wandered this charming place with our coffees 🌟 The staff in local dress are very warm.. You can taste and buy the famous cheeses, all sorts of mustards, chocolate and the 'stroopwafels' unique to Belgium that they offer.
A lovely museum to visit: Zaans Museum, where you can find and learn about many local things.
Getting There
As with other places, there are plenty of options for getting to this village.
Train
The fastest way to get to Zaanse Schans village is to take the train from the central train station. The 10-15 minute train journey costs €7.2 return, but the walk from the train station to the centre takes 10-15 minutes.
Bus
For Zaanse Schans by bus, you can get a ticket from the EBS offices at Amsterdam Central, paying €10 return. After getting this card you can reach the village on bus 391 or 817, leaving from platform E. Since bus 391's route is a bit longer, your journey takes 50 minutes, while if you use line 817, which has a faster route, you'll arrive in 20 minutes.
**Line 817 is an express line and only runs in the summer period.
If, like us, you buy the Amsterdam Region&Travel Ticket, you'll cover both the Edam-Volendam route and the Zaanse Schans village route with a single ticket. You can even ride trams, the metro and buses within Amsterdam for free with this card. This ticket is €18.50 per person for 1 day.
One reason we chose the bus is that the train station is a 15-20 minute walk from the town centre. Since the bus goes straight to the town centre, it was more appealing to us. As the buses also have Wi-Fi, the journey went nicely, looking at the surroundings and staying live on social media.
Finally, a warning: whenever you go to Zaanse Schans village, be prepared as if it could rain at any moment. Luckily, even though it was 29 December, this lovely village greeted us with wonderful sunshine!
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