The Windmills of Zaanse Schans

About 15 minutes by train from Amsterdam you will find the windmill park called Zaanse Schans. Getting there is easy: from Amsterdam Central Station take a direct train to Alkmaar and get off at Koog-Zaandijk. The journey lasts a little over a quarter of an hour and the ticket costs about 5 euros return. Follow the signs and you arrive at the Zaanse Schans. The best thing, you won't believe it… is that entry is free! The main attraction of the Zaanse Schans park are the 6 surviving windmills along the river Zaan (once there were 700). These typical buildings were used to grind anything: from cereals to dyes, and they were a great help to the industry of the time. Today these 6 windmills are still working and well kept by the people who live there, and some of them are still in operation. You can visit them but you must pay a contribution for their upkeep (prices range from 4 to 6 euros).

The largest and perhaps the most famous is the mill called De Kat, the cat, where you can watch mustard seeds being ground, but also dyes and flour. In others you can watch wood being cut... all very nice but not essential to see. In my opinion the spectacle is the whole of it: the landscape is wonderful, with countryside kept in impeccable order, with these colourful windmills slowly letting their magnificent sails move in the light breeze... not to mention the rivers that run inside the houses, reachable by little wooden bridges that seem to come out of a childhood fairy-tale book... If you get hungry there are also two large bars, in one of which you can