Netherlands - Zaanse Schans

Zaanse Schans is a small town in the Netherlands made up of historical houses and windmills relocated into a new site. It sounds quite terrible, but actually it is a genuine town with people living there, and it is amazingly well preserved and the windmills actually still do work (whether they do productive work is another question).

In fact after arriving in Zaanse Schans we wondered if we had wasted our time going to Kinderdjik, since it is actually more picturesque and interesting than Kinderdjik.

We spent most of our time wandering in and out of the shops there, the highlight being the clog shop where they had a demonstration of clog making, and where I spent a long time wondering if I really needed my own clogs. In the end I decided I could do without the clogs, since wearing them felt like I had two small boats installed on my feet.

We also went inside one of the windmills, which was used to make dyes for paints. I even made a little movie to show what it is like inside.

Outside of Zaanse Schans we also saw the few Tulips that we would see in the Netherlands: a few sad examples left behind while their neighbours had been lopped off for sale at the markets. Unusually for us we had not done our research - we figured that, while we were at the tail end of the Tulip season, there would surely still be some in the fields. How wrong we were! The season is apparently very precise and we had missed it by some 2 weeks. There were no longer any Tulips in the Netherlands and we resolved we would have to come back and see them next season.