May 12, 2026

Zaanse Schans: The Complete Day Trip Guide from Amsterdam

Plan the perfect Zaanse Schans day trip from Amsterdam — working windmills, traditional crafts, and a complete guide to visiting without the crowds.

Love Netherlands

Dear Netherlands,

Amsterdam in April has a particular kind of quiet. The tulips are out in the park. The café terraces are full by ten. Somewhere in the Jordaan a church bell is telling the hour, and a barge is gliding past, and a child is learning to cycle without training wheels. This is the version of the Netherlands you came for.

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In today’s email:

• Zaanse Schans: The Complete Day Trip Guide from Amsterdam
• At The Café — Café ‘T Mandje — The First Lesbian Bar in Amsterdam
• Around The Web — Leiden Travel Guide, Haarlem Travel Guide, Delft — A Day in the Town That Made Vermeer + more
• From Love Netherlands — The Wadden Islands — Choosing Your Island
• Dutch Food You Will Love — Kibbeling — The Dutch Fried Cod From the Fish Stall

Zaanse Schans: The Complete Day Trip Guide from Amsterdam

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A Zaanse Schans day trip from Amsterdam is one of the most rewarding half-days you can spend in the Netherlands. Just 15 kilometres north of the city, this open-air heritage village sits along the banks of the River Zaan, where a row of working windmills turns against the flat Dutch sky, painted houses lean over the water, and craft workshops have been producing clog shoes, Gouda cheese, and traditional Dutch paint for centuries. It is, in short, exactly what the Netherlands looks like in your imagination — and remarkably, it is genuine. Love the Netherlands? Join our free newsletter for hidden Dutch gems → inlovewithnetherlands.substack.com Unlike many heritage attractions built around tourism, Zaanse Schans began as a genuine working community. The windmills here are not decorative — they produce real sawdust, oil, and paint. The cheese dairy makes cheese you can actually buy. The…

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At The Café

Café ‘T Mandje — The First Lesbian Bar in Amsterdam

Café ‘T Mandje on the Zeedijk opened in 1927, run by Bet van Beeren — one of the first openly lesbian bar owners in the world. The bar’s interior is preserved exactly as Bet left it: dozens of cut-off ties pinned to the ceiling (her custom for any man who got too rowdy), framed photos of regulars from the 1930s onwards, and the same long wooden bar her customers leaned on for half a century. It’s still a working café and an active part of LGBTQ history. Stop in for a beer, take in the ceiling, and read the small museum corner near the door.

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Around The Web

From Love Netherlands

The Wadden Islands — Choosing Your Island

The ferry from Den Helder leaves at half past eight on a grey April morning, and within minutes the Dutch coastline becomes abstract—a thin line of dunes and church spires receding into mist. The North Sea is the colour of wet concrete. Gulls wheel overhead. Ahead, invisible until the last moment, one of five inhabited Dutch Wadden Islands materialises out of the haze: a low, green shape, ringed with sand. Most travellers who make it this far…

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Photo: De Waddenzee by Uberprutser via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Dutch Food You Will Love

Kibbeling — The Dutch Fried Cod From the Fish Stall

Kibbeling is bite-sized chunks of cod, dipped in spiced beer batter and deep-fried until the outside crackles and the fish inside flakes apart. Every fish stall in every Dutch town square sells it, served in a paper cone with a small pot of garlic-and-mustard whitlofsaus. There’s nothing quite like the first bite on a cold afternoon, salt and crisp and steam all in one go. Dutch fried fish is taken seriously here — every region has its own batter recipe, and the truly local stalls cook to order rather than pre-frying.

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