Daytrip to Zaanse Schans Windmills and Zaandam Lego Houses

Overview

An eight-hour daytrip north from Amsterdam by coach: the working windmills and timber lanes of Zaanse Schans, then Zaandam, where a modern building stacks the same traditional houses into one façade.

What to expect

• Departure by coach from the Amsterdam meeting point.
• Commentary on the way out of the city.
• Guided time among the mills and along the Zaan.
• The riverside lanes and their mill views.
• A stop in Zaandam for the stacked façade.
• Return to the same meeting point.

Why the houses are wooden

Almost everywhere else in the Netherlands builds in brick. The Zaan built in timber, and the reason is underfoot: this is peat, soft and waterlogged, and it would not carry the weight of masonry without expensive piling.

Wood was the answer — light, quick, and cuttable by the region's own sawmills, which is a neat circularity. A Zaan house could also be dismantled and moved, and some of them were, which is why the walls you see are frequently older than the plots they stand on.

The colour is not decoration either. The deep green on the boards, Zaans groen, was made from cheap local pigment and painted on to protect the timber; it became so standard that the region is recognisable by it from a distance.

The Lego Houses are a hotel

Worth knowing before you arrive: the stacked, brightly coloured building in Zaandam is a hotel, opened in 2010, not a historic street. Its façade piles up something like seventy traditional Zaan house fronts into one block.

It is a serious piece of architecture rather than a joke, and one detail rewards a closer look — a single blue house near the middle, which nods to the blue Zaan houses Claude Monet painted when he stayed here in 1871.

This is a photo stop. You look at it from the outside, and twenty minutes is enough.

What the mills are actually doing

The mills at Zaanse Schans still work. They saw timber, press oil and grind pigment, and the machinery is loud, oily and genuinely in motion.

Going inside any of them is arranged individually at the door on the day, as are the museums and the craft workshops, so carry a means of payment if you want more than the outside view.

Practicalities

The ground is a mix of cobbles, gravel and wooden decking, and the riverside is fully exposed — the wind comes off open water and there is nothing between it and you.

Bring a windproof layer whatever the forecast for Amsterdam says, and shoes you do not mind getting wet. Lunch is not part of the day, and there is time at Zaanse Schans to eat if you want to.