Enjoy a five hour private trip to the best sights north of Amsterdam. Depending on your wishes and seasonal highlights, your guide will suggest the best destinations for a fun half day tour.

All our destinations in the countryside north of Amsterdam are fifteen minutes drive between each other. For this tour we can visit five destinations. Have a look at our locations or read on for some suggestions to choose from.

Zaanse Schans windmills

We can start -for example- with the most famous windmills of Holland. Zaanse Schans is the oldest industrial area of Europe and the backbone of the Dutch Golden Age, when hundreds of windmills stood on the banks of the river Zaan. You can visit a spice mill and smell the exotic spices of the Dutch East Indies, see how a paint mill produces paint the way Rembrandt did, or watch how a fully operational saw mill works.

Cheese farm and wooden shoes

Afterwards we can visit a family owned dairy farm that still produces cheese in the traditional way. Learn about the two most famous types of Dutch cheese, Gouda and Edam. In this farm you can taste twelve delicious cheeses. The farm also houses a professional wooden shoe maker. He will demonstrate how they are made out of fresh logs.

Cheesetown Edam

If your group is totally into cheese, we can also visit Edam, a famous cheese making town. Every wednesday in summertime Edam has a cheese market, one of the oldest markets in Europe. If your tour starts on a wednesday, we highly recommend visiting this market. Local producers bring their cheeses to the quayside on wooden rafts from the surrounding countryside. After unloading them, they are brought to the main square. Here you can taste as much cheese as you want.

Fishing village Volendam

Just a stone’s throw away is Volendam, one of the oldest fishing villages in Holland. Here you can walk up the old sea levy and see the former Zuiderzee (Southern Sea) stretch out over the horizon. We will try ‘haring met uitjes en zuur’ (herring with onions and pickles), ‘kibbeling’ (pieces of fried cod) or ‘gerookte paling’ (smoked eel). After lunch we can walk through the ‘Doolhof’, literally the Maze. This is where the fishermen lived with their families.

Monnickendam

A short drive from Volendam we can visit Monnickendam, one of the oldest towns in Holland and a large marina for traditional Dutch sailing vessels. This is a nice village to see how Dutch levies and locks work. In summertime Monnickendam has ‘fishery days’ every friday. This is a nice and quiet local market with very few tourists. Artisans and local producers will show you their products and demonstrate how they are made.

Old Dutch villages in Waterland

A lovely final stop before heading back to Amsterdam could be the old villages in Waterland. Broek in Waterland for example is a beautiful village to visit. It was a holiday spot for wealthy people from Amsterdam wanting to enjoy the countryside in summertime. The old harbor is a good spot to taste some true Dutch Schnapps, like Jenever and Schipper Bitter. Another option is visiting the huge church of Ransdorp, a village where Rembrandt made his sketches. Or we can drive to our headquarters in Uitdam and enjoy a swim in the lake. Everything is possible, it’s your day!

What’s included

• Transportation by van
• Guide
• Herring and kibbeling tasting
• Old Dutch schnapps tasting

What’s not included

• Lunch and drinks