Continuing with our trip to the Netherlands brings us to the city of Zaandam. We drove there on the first day after we visited Haarlem and stayed for a few hours in the early afternoon.
Zaandam is located along the Zaan river in the province of North Holland. Its just a short drive from the city of Amsterdam and is a pretty unique place to see if only for a quick visit.
Tall green and blue buildings and a very unique architecture style make it unlike any other place I have been to in the country.
I don’t know what the design style would be called exactly but I would describe it as being part modern and part traditional myself - so modern contemporary maybe? Let me know in the comments if you can peg it down for me.
Before I get too carried away with how cool this place is I think that its important to mention that the main area that I am showcasing in this post is only one small part of a much larger city and the area with all of the really unique and cool buildings is actually very small.
It's like a small shopping zone with only a few stores and restaurants, a tourist office and a few hotels and condos. The rest of the city was mostly just your standard run of the mill city from what I could see.
So that being said, there wasn't much to do around these buildings other than take some cool photographs or maybe have lunch in one of a few cafes or restaurants.
Like I said, most of the buildings appeared to be condos though, hotels or even just general commercial offices selling insurance or realestate or whatever.
For instance, I believe that these ones were condos with commercial offices below.
One of the buildings was a Pathè movie theater, if that makes any sort of difference.
So to me it was a place you would spend much time at on vacation and would mostly be just an interesting place to go and appreciate cool architecture. If thats not your thing then there may not be anything there for you.
Our dog wasn't all that impressed, but I myself really got a kick out of the different building designs.
The one below had to be inspired by the video game Tetris.
There was another street close by with many more stores as well but it was just your typical European outdoor shopping mall so I didn't bother taking pictures of it. Some of the store front were kind of neat though with traditional Zaan home facades.
An obscure but interesting fact about Zaandam is that the first European Macdonalds restaurant was opened in the city back in 1971 - who knew?
Probably one of the coolest parts about the area to me were the multiple bridges and walkways spanning the upper and lower portions of the space.
They weren't just functional pathways but were uniquely designed to create interest and to give the space a unique sort of flow.
For instance, some of the bridges were straight while others were curvy.
I found this to be sort of a-typical to most places and to me the contrast inspired curiosity in a way.
Even though the space wasn't all that big, the bridges criss-crossing overhead made you want to go around and explore the area.
It was as if you had to check out every nook and cranny to make sure that you didn't miss out on anything.
I think that is a pretty smart design feature myself.
Inntel Hotel
You've seen bits and pieces of it throughout the post so far but one of the main sites of the area is the Inntel Hotel.
It's kind of a focal point of the entire area.
It's facade is made up of 70 individual Zaan homes of various shapes and sizes...
each of which is painted in one of four traditional colors of Zaan green and blue.
The building is situated on a small canal and it can be viewed from walkways on the top and bottom platforms.
As you can see I spent some time viewing the building from all angles and took a bunch of photos. It was just a very unique building. It was impossible not to appreciate it.
There was one other area in the city close by that we thought was quite nice.
It was just a small plaza surrounded by restaurants and bars but it looked like a good spot to have lunch or dinner or pre-dinner drinks. It looked like the type of place that the locals would hang out at.
We had already eaten lunch up by the Inntel Hotel by that point though so we didn't end up sitting down at any of the restaurants. Instead we wrapped up our walk and headed back to our vehicle for our last stop for the day, Zaanse Schans. It was only a 10 minute drive down the road so it wasn't too far. Parking would prove to be a real challenge over there, but I think that will be a story for another day.