Experience the best of Zaandam

Zaandam grew along the Zaan, where wind-driven mills once sawed timber, pressed oil and ground paint and spices for the shipbuilders and merchants of the Golden Age. A few survive at the Zaanse Schans, a row of green timber houses, mills and workshops on the river bank a short way upstream. In the town itself, a small wooden house is where Tsar Peter the Great stayed in 1697 while he studied shipbuilding.

Zaandam lies on the railway line to Amsterdam, which makes it an easy base outside the capital. Beyond the town, the peat meadows and ditches of the Wormer- and Jisperveld are a wetland of birds and cattle that is best explored by bike, and Haarlem and the beach at Zandvoort lie to the south-west. Edam and Volendam are to the north-east.

The Zaan district has long made mustard, cocoa and biscuits, and shops near the windmills sell cheese, mustard and wooden clogs. Dutch pancakes and fresh herring are easy to find in town. The mills turn most freely when the wind picks up, and the polder light is at its best in the low sun of autumn.