Inside the working paint mill called De Kat, the wooden gears creak overhead like an old wooden ship and the air smells of linseed oil and damp grain. Step out the door and the wind off the Zaan river hits you full in the face, carrying cocoa from the De Bonte Hen mill next door. That single moment is why this is the most-booked day trip out of Amsterdam, and why I think it earns it.
- In a Hurry? My Top Picks
- Quick Map of What You Are Actually Visiting
- Should You Take a Tour or Do This Yourself?
- The Coach Tours: Which One to Pick
- 1. From Amsterdam: Zaanse Schans, Volendam and Marken Day Trip, from
- 2. Zaanse Schans, Edam, Volendam and Marken Bus Tour, from
- 3. Guided Zaanse Schans and Cheese Tasting Tour, from
- 4. Zaanse Schans 3-Hour Small Group Tour, from
- 5. Giethoorn and Zaanse Schans Windmills Day Tour, from 5
- Inside Zaanse Schans: What is Actually There
- Volendam: What to Actually Do There
- Marken: The Quiet One
- Edam: The Cheese Town (If Your Tour Includes It)
- What to Pack and What to Wear
- Best Time of Year to Go
- How the Coach Day Actually Goes
- A Quick Word on Cheese, Clogs, and the Souvenir Shops
- Combining With Other Amsterdam Day Trips
- Common Things People Get Wrong
- One Last Thing
- If You Have Two More Days in the Region
In a Hurry? My Top Picks
Best overall (and the cheapest big tour): From Amsterdam: Zaanse Schans, Volendam & Marken Day Trip from $34. Coach + windmills + two villages in 5.5 hours. The default for a reason.
If you want Edam too (the actual cheese town): Zaanse Schans, Edam, Volendam & Marken Bus Tour from $32, full 8 hours, four stops, big coach.
Just the windmills, fewer people: Zaanse Schans 3-Hour Small Group Tour from $50. Back in Amsterdam by lunch.
Quick Map of What You Are Actually Visiting
Three places. Sometimes four. People mix the names up constantly, so it is worth being clear before you book.
Zaanse Schans is a working windmill village on the Zaan river, about 20 minutes north of Amsterdam by coach. Seven mills still turn. There is a wooden shoe workshop, a cheese-making demo at the Catharina Hoeve dairy, a Cocoa Lab, and a museum about the Zaan industrial era. It is open-air and free to enter. The mills, the museum, and the demos charge separately if you want to go inside.
Volendam is a former fishing port on the IJsselmeer, the inland sea east of Amsterdam. It is touristy. People come for the harbour-front fish stalls, the photo studios where you dress up in traditional costume, and the eel-smokers at the back of the main strip. The fishing fleet still works but it is small.
Marken was an island until 1957, when a causeway connected it to the mainland. The houses are dark green or black with white trim, gabled and short. It used to be a Catholic enclave inside a Protestant province, and the village still feels separate. Most boats and bus tours stop here for an hour.
Edam is the cheese town. Yes, the actual Edam cheese comes from here. The Wednesday cheese-market re-enactment runs in summer at Jan van Nieuwenhuyzenplein. Some longer day trips include a 30-minute Edam stop. Some skip it.
Should You Take a Tour or Do This Yourself?
I will be straight with you. You can do this DIY. A regional day ticket from Amsterdam Centraal is about €19.50 and covers buses 314 and 315 to Marken via the village of Broek in Waterland. The Volendam-Marken Express ferry between the two villages is roughly €8.50 one way, and runs every 30 to 45 minutes through the day.
So why book a tour? Three reasons.
One, the coach drops you at Zaanse Schans first thing, before the buses unload. Public transport gets you there later, around 10:30, and by then the path along the dijk has filled up. Two, the price gap is smaller than you think. A coach tour is around $34 to $43 for the standard 5.5-hour. Doing it yourself is roughly €28 plus food and any museum tickets. For a few extra euro you skip the route-planning. Three, getting between Volendam and Marken on public transport is actually a hassle on Sundays and in winter when the ferry runs less often. The coach-and-coach combo doesn’t care.
If your group is two adults with no kids and you like figuring things out, DIY is fine. For a family of four, or anyone who has been travelling for two weeks already, a coach tour pays back the price difference in saved hassle. The flagship Zaanse Schans, Volendam and Marken day trip is the one almost everyone books.
The Coach Tours: Which One to Pick
There are about ten variants on this day trip floating around the booking sites. They split into five buckets. Below are my picks for each bucket, sorted by which one I would actually book.
1. From Amsterdam: Zaanse Schans, Volendam and Marken Day Trip, from $34
This is the cheapest of the big tours and runs the most often. 5.5 hours, three stops, coach with a live guide. It is the one our full review looks at in detail, and the one I send most travellers to first. The downside is bus size, these coaches carry 50 plus. If that bothers you, scroll to pick number five.
2. Zaanse Schans, Edam, Volendam and Marken Bus Tour, from $32
Same coach format, but with Edam tacked on for a 30-minute stop. 8 hours total. I prefer this version when it is in season because Edam itself is beautiful, and you get to see where the cheese name actually came from. The Edam variant review goes through what is open mid-week versus weekends.
3. Guided Zaanse Schans and Cheese Tasting Tour, from $22
Half-day option. You get the windmill village plus a guided cheese tasting at Catharina Hoeve, where they take you through the difference between young and aged Gouda. We cover the format in our cheese-tasting review. Skip this one if your priority is the fishing villages, it doesn’t go to them.
4. Zaanse Schans 3-Hour Small Group Tour, from $50
Pay more, get less, but in a much better way. Small minivan, capped numbers, more time with the guide. The trade-off: just Zaanse Schans, no fishing villages. If you have already seen pretty European fishing harbours and just want the windmills and clogs, this is the smarter pick. Our small-group review walks through what they actually fit into 3 hours.
5. Giethoorn and Zaanse Schans Windmills Day Tour, from $135
Different category. 10 hours, north past Zaanse Schans to Giethoorn. Giethoorn has 6.5 km of canals, no cars, and thatch-roofed cottages on small grass islands. It is sometimes called the Venice of the North, and it is the one stop on this whole list that genuinely surprised me. Our Giethoorn day tour review covers what to skip if you are short on time.
Inside Zaanse Schans: What is Actually There
Zaanse Schans is laid out as one long path on top of the dijk, with windmills lined up on the river side and traditional green wooden houses on the other. From north to south you walk past, roughly: De Kat (paint mill), De Zoeker (oil mill), De Bonte Hen (also oil), De Huisman (mustard), De Os (also oil), Het Jonge Schaap (sawmill), and De Gekroonde Poelenburg (sawmill). Mills open varies day to day. They each charge a small entry, around €5, and the money keeps the millers paid.
The other things to do are scattered along the same path:
- Catharina Hoeve dairy: free entry. Watch the cheese-making demo, then they push the samples on you. Good or bad depending on your appetite for soft sell.
- Wooden Shoe Workshop: free entry, free demo. The carver makes a clog out of a poplar block in about three minutes flat. The shop is the soft sell again.
- Zaans Museum: paid entry, around €13.50. Worth it if it rains. The Cocoa Lab inside is good, Zaandam was the centre of European cocoa milling for two centuries.
- Bakkerijmuseum (bakery museum): tiny, free, sells warm Zaanse-style biscuits. Easy to miss but worth the stop.
Volendam: What to Actually Do There
Volendam takes the strongest hit on TripAdvisor reviews and I get why. It is the most touristy of the three. There are about 15 shops selling identical clog magnets, a costume photo studio every fifty metres, and a long row of fish stalls along the harbour. Some people bounce off it.
Here is what I think is actually worth doing once you are there.
Eat smoked eel from a fish stall. The line for Smederij Schilder, near the centre of the harbour, moves fast. A whole eel costs €6 to €8 depending on size, and they come pre-deboned and ready to peel back the skin. It tastes like very rich smoked salmon, but oilier and warmer. If eel feels intense, get the kibbeling, battered cod chunks with the same garlic-mayo sauce, for about €5.
Try a fresh stroopwafel at one of the harbour-side stands. They press the syrup waffle on the spot. The chocolate-dipped one with sea salt is the best of the bunch. Around €3.50.
Walk the back streets behind the main strip. Doolhof and Lageweg are quiet residential lanes with the same gabled green wooden houses, no shops, no tourists. Two minutes off the main drag and you have the place to yourself.
Skip the dress-up photo studios unless it is genuinely a thing on your list. They are €15 to €30 a person, and the result is a passable studio photo of you in someone else’s borrowed lace. The harbour itself is a better picture.
Marken: The Quiet One
Most coach tours give you 45 minutes here. Use them well.
Marken used to be an island. Until 1957 you got there by boat. Now a 2.5 km causeway connects it to the mainland and a public bus runs across. The village has not really grown since the connection, and the centre still feels stuck about a hundred years back.
The harbour is the obvious first stop. From the bus park or the ferry pier, walk along the Havenbuurt and you’ll pass Café De Visscher, the wooden shoe workshop, and the smoked-fish stall at the corner. Fifteen minutes is enough to do the loop.
Then walk up to Kerkbuurt, the inland village. Two minutes uphill from the harbour. The houses cluster around the church on a small mound built up to keep the village above the IJsselmeer floods. It is quieter than the harbour. People actually live here, the kids cycle home from school, and you get a sense of why Marken still considers itself separate.
If you have an extra hour, the walk to Het Paard van Marken, the small lighthouse on the eastern tip, is 4 km return, flat, on a bitumen path. Most coach tours don’t give you the time. If you are doing this DIY and you have stamina, do it. Volendam is bigger and louder; the Paard walk is the part you will remember.
Edam: The Cheese Town (If Your Tour Includes It)
Edam is small and the canals make it photogenic. Most tours stop here for 30 minutes. That is enough to walk the harbour basin, cross one of the wooden drawbridges, and buy a wedge of the actual stuff at the Henri Willig shop near the weighing house. The Kaaswaag (cheese weighing house) dates from 1592 and runs as a small museum in summer.
If you are here on a summer Wednesday, the cheese-market re-enactment is the thing to time. The carriers in white outfits and straw hats run the rounds with their handcarts of yellow wheels, the buyers slap palms on the deal, and an auctioneer calls out the prices. It is staged for tourists. It is also genuinely fun.
What to Pack and What to Wear
This is windy, wet country. The Zaan and the IJsselmeer push damp air over you all day, even in summer.
- Waterproof shell jacket. Not optional from October to March.
- Layers. North Holland goes from 8°C in the morning to 17°C at noon and back down by 4pm.
- Walking shoes you don’t mind getting muddy. The dijk path at Zaanse Schans is cobbled but the side paths are gravel and soft. Avoid white sneakers.
- Cash for the small mills. Some still don’t take cards. €5 to €7 in coins is enough.
- A small day bag. Bigger than a clutch, smaller than a hiking pack.
Best Time of Year to Go
Spring through early autumn is the obvious answer. April to mid-October. Mills open more reliably, the dairy and shoe demos run, and the Wednesday Edam cheese market only runs in July and August.
If you are travelling in spring, a smart play is to combine this trip with the tulip fields. The flagship season is mid-March through mid-May. Plenty of operators run a combined coach that hits both Zaanse Schans and the Keukenhof gardens in one day, and our Keukenhof booking guide walks through which combos are worth it. If your dates fall outside the Keukenhof window, the standard 3-village day trip is still a strong call.
Winter is quieter and cheaper but has a real downside. Some mills are closed for maintenance from November to February. The wind off the IJsselmeer is brutal. Volendam is half-shuttered. Skip the small-group three-hour tour in winter, the value isn’t there. The big coach tour is fine because you spend most of it warm and indoors between stops.
How the Coach Day Actually Goes
Here’s a rough timeline for the standard 5.5 to 8 hour coach. Treat the times as approximate. Pick-up is at Amsterdam Centraal or near the Damrak.
- 08:30, Pick up. Coach loads from the meeting point. Bring your booking voucher on your phone.
- 09:15, Arrive Zaanse Schans. The guide gives a 5-minute orientation, then 75 to 90 minutes free.
- 10:45, Back on the coach. 30 minutes to Volendam.
- 11:15, Arrive Volendam. About 60 minutes including a lunch slot.
- 12:30, Ferry across to Marken (some tours) or coach round the dam.
- 13:00, Marken stop, 45 minutes.
- 13:45, Optional Edam stop on the longer 8-hour trips, 30 minutes.
- 15:00 to 16:30, Back at Centraal. Times vary by traffic and exact tour.
A Quick Word on Cheese, Clogs, and the Souvenir Shops
Every stop has a shop. They sell roughly the same things, at slightly different prices. A few real notes from buying through these for years.
The vacuum-sealed cheese wedges hold up fine in checked baggage. Pack them in the middle of your case, not against the wall, and they don’t smell. A €12 wedge from the dairy at Zaanse Schans is the same product as the €18 wedge in the Volendam shop with the brighter sign. Buy at the first stop.
Wooden clogs as a wall ornament are a fair souvenir. Wearable wooden clogs are surprisingly comfortable but a hassle to pack. The painted blue-and-white tourist pair is fine. The plain unfinished farmer pair is what people who actually wear them buy, and it is half the price.
Skip the Delft Blue ceramics here. They are made in Asia and badged. The proper hand-painted Royal Delft is from the Royal Delft Museum, near The Hague, and it costs ten times what these shops charge. If you buy the ceramic mug at Zaanse Schans, know what you are buying.
Combining With Other Amsterdam Day Trips
If you are thinking past this one trip, a few things to know about how the day trip cluster fits together.
Zaanse Schans plus Keukenhof in one day is workable but tight. Plenty of operators sell the combo from late March to mid-May. You spend less time at each stop than you would on the dedicated tours, and the drive between Lisse and Zaandam takes an hour. Worth it if you only have one free day in spring and want both.
Zaanse Schans plus an Amsterdam city activity on the same day is also fine. The standard 5.5-hour tour gets you back to Centraal by mid-afternoon, with plenty of time for an evening canal cruise or a guided bike loop.
If your itinerary already has a sailing day in the Netherlands, the small-group 3-hour Zaanse tour pairs well with an afternoon stop. Half-day day trip out, half-day in town.
Common Things People Get Wrong
A few mistakes I have seen friends make on this trip.
Booking the longest tour by default. 8 hours plus is a lot when half of it is on a coach. If you can pick the 5.5-hour version, do.
Skipping the windmill entry. The mills are free to look at from outside, and most people stop there. Pay the €5 to climb at least one. The view from the top floor and the noise of the gears are why you came.
Eating lunch at the first place you see in Volendam. The harbour-side restaurants are pricey and aimed at coach groups. Walk a block back from the strip to find better, cheaper Dutch lunch options.
Taking a Marken-only tour. Marken on its own does not justify the trip. Pair it with Volendam or Zaanse Schans, or skip it.
Underestimating the wind. Even sunny summer days on the IJsselmeer are windy. Tie your hat down.
One Last Thing
The first time I went to Zaanse Schans I did the cheap big-bus version, ate too much smoked eel in Volendam, missed the windmill entry, and got soaked walking out to the Paard van Marken. I would do it again exactly that way. The mistakes are part of it. Pick a tour you can afford, get there before 11am, and pay to climb one mill. The rest works itself out.
If You Have Two More Days in the Region
The Netherlands does day-trips-from-the-capital better than most countries. If you have time after this one, the most natural pair is the Keukenhof tulip gardens trip in spring, which combines easily with this same coach format. For something completely different, an Amsterdam canal cruise after dark on the same day is a low-effort high-payoff option, and the Anne Frank House visit is a slower, heavier counterweight to a cheerful village day. If you cross to the UK or Scotland next, the same coach-from-the-capital format scales well to the Cotswolds villages from London and the Glenfinnan and Glencoe Highlands tour from Edinburgh.
