If you are in the Netherlands you need to visit Kinderdijk windmills which is a UNESCO world heritage site of windmills in South Holland. It’s perfect for all ages to explore including children. We visited with our children so I will highlight the best tips for visiting Kinderdijk with kids. It’s high up on my list of the best things to do in the Netherlands with kids. It was one of the best day trips we did on our trip to the Netherlands this summer.
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How to get to Kinderdijk
If you are driving to Kinderdijk as we did then the best place to park is in Alblasserdam. When you pre-book your tickets online, make sure you choose the car park/shuttle bus add-on to mak your visit easy.
When we visited in August 2022 it was 7.50 euros for a car parking ticket and however many seats you need on the shuttle bus. The shuttle bus wasn’t particularly big so in high season, I imagine it will get busy.
The car park is very well signposted when you get into Alblasserdam. There is a small hut in the car park where you need to show your tickets and you wait for the shuttle. There is a vending machine and toilets too.
When we visited shuttle buses were every half an hour. It’s a fairly short ride from the car park to Kinderdijk. There is a small parking lot at the mills but the shuttle service is recommended.
You can also arrive by public transport including catching the water bus from Rotterdam which has to be the best way to arrive.
Before you visit Kinderdijk
You can pre-book your tickets before you visit the windmills of Kinderdijk and download the free app. You can enter your code to link your tickets to your app which we did. This makes it really easy to show your tickets to the shuttle bus, museums and boat drivers throughout the day.
How much does a day at Kinderdijk windmills cost?
It is free to walk around Kinderdijk and the mills but you need entry tickets to go inside any of the museums and on the boat tours. I’ll tell you more about all of these below.
In my opinion, it is well worth the ticket prices to visit the museums and ride the boats plus you are contributing to the preservation of this amazing place and maintaining its Unesco world heritage status.
Book your * tour of Kinderdijk here.
You can also book here – Kinderdijk
You can also combine your visit to Kinderdijk with other attractions such as visiting the Hague – * 1 day tour of Kinderdijk and The Hague.
Or * 1 day tour of Rotterdam and Kinderdijk.
Facillities at Kinderdijk
Once you get off the shuttle bus, you can visit the information centre, toilets, gift shop and cafe which are right by the entrance. You can also climb onto the roof of this area which gives you fantastic views of the mills and there is a small-scale model of the area up there too.
The cafe is very reasonably priced and has a lovely terrace overlooking the river to enjoy your drinks and food on. There are also a giant pair of clogs here which children love to stand in and a model windmill.
There are toilet facilities throughout the area including at both the museums so you don’t have to worry about always having to come back to the information centre.
There are picnic tables dotted around all the main areas too. You’ll also find a few food stalls selling traditional Dutch treats like mini pancakes and stroopwafels as well as ice creams. Again we were pleasantly surprised by the reasonable prices of these treats.
There are plenty of footpaths around Kinderdijk as well as cycle paths too. It’s a stunning place to explore on foot, by bike or on the river.
There are plenty of footpaths around Kinderdijk as well as cycle paths too. It’s a stunning place to explore on foot, by bike or on the river.
How big is Kinderdijk?
We explored the Kinderdijk from the information centre up to the final museum and walked a little over 2 miles (in total, so 1 mile each way). You could use the hopper boat service if you prefer which stops near the information centre, the first windmill museum and the final windmill museum and the floating exhibition.
I’d recommend at least a half day to fully explore. We were there for most of the day when we visited. It’s such a beautiful place and fascinating to learn about how the people of the Netherlands used these famous windmills as part of a complex water management system.
Mueseums at Kinderdijk
There are various small museums around Kinderdijk for you to explore and discover the history of this really beautiful site and the historic windmills
The Kinderdijk mills date back to the 13th century and were used to keep the water levels down. Did you know that 40% of the Netherlands is below sea level and they have built up a lot of expertise in water level management? This whole site is a symbol of Dutch water management and a really impressive place to visit on any trip to the Netherlands. It really shows human ingenuity at its best.
Water management is still needed for the drainage of land but technology now plays it’s part. The mills no longer pump the water, this is all done with electric water pumps now and without the need for a miller in each windmill to work day and night, 365 days a year. Two of the historical windmills are now museum mills and the rest are still inhabited by millers but now their job is to maintain the windmills to keep the UNESCO site going.
Each mill needs to have the sails turned by the wind 60,000 times annually. On the Tuesday that we visited, only a couple of the windmills were working but it didn’t spoil the visit at all. Saturday is a popular day for the millers to get some rotations in.
There is also one day in September when all the windmills have their sails going round and a week in September when all the mills are illuminated in the evenings.
Auxiliary pumping station De Fabriek
Here you can watch a 12 minute film of the story of the battle of the millers and the water flow. It is in Dutch but the subtitles can be in many languages.
We enjoyed it in English and learnt a lot about how the windmills worked and also the possible options for the source of the name Kinderdijk. These include a fairy tale about a wooden cradle with a baby in that washed up in the dyke during the saint Elizabeth flood. There is now a sculpture in the river of a wooden cradle known as Beatrice’s cradle that commemorates the floods and this famous story.
The film is shown with multiple screens all around the room showing different views, including different people with different points of view down the sides. Older children can read the subtitles but we found our 6 year old didn’t and still managed to be entertained by all the different screens.
Nederwaard museum mill
This is the middle windmill museum and in this one you can climb up the inner ladders to the middle floors. The ladders are steep and our youngest did need some help climbing them but it is manageable. There are 2 ladders so a one way system is in operation through the mill which is just as well as it does get busy inside.
This is a stone windmill and you can see how miller Hoek used to live here with his wife and thirteen children. It certainly was a squeeze!
Blokweer museum mill
This is the final museum and it is a lovely area to explore. There is a beautiful garden around the oldest mill. In the garden, there are various animals like chickens, rabbits and mini goats.
There are also other fun things that my girls enjoyed like trying on wooden clogs and trying out the traditional washing machine.
There is also a moored-up bardge boat that you can climb on board. Below deck, you will find a couple of screens playing videos about the history of the mills.
You can also go inside this windmill which is the oldest one. You can’t climb up to the higher level like you can in the other mill but it is set up as a 19th century mill ground floor with a kitchen and sleeping areas.
Wisboom pumping station
We loved this small interactive exhibition so much we visited it at the beginning and end of our visit.
There are several interactive echibitions that my children enjoyed. There is a magnetic wall with various magnetic marble run pieces around where children can play and create different ways of getting the marble from the top to the bottom.
There is also a large interactive model of the mills which children can pick one of the mills to to control and they can join the millers to battle against the water to keep the water levels low.
Bird theatre
This building is near to the pumping station. There are large windows overlooking a reed bed where you can bird watch. There are touch screen screen with different languages to learn about birds and here the sounds they make.
More things to do with children at Kinderdijk
Nature trail
Part way down the walk to the final museum is a nature trail on the left hand side. It’s well worth taking a short detour down this path. We saw lots of butterflies in this are on our visit.
Longer cycle trail or walk (7.5 km walk in app)
You could easily extend your visit to Kinderdijk with a longer walk or bike ride. There are cycle paths throughout the whole area as well as footpaths. On the app you’ll find 2 walking routes which continue after the final museum mill where we chose to turn back. There is a shorter 7.5k route which might be just right for your family.
Boat tours at Kinderdijk
There are two options for a boat trip at Kinderdijk. A boat ride is a great way to see the area and the windmills from the water. There are limited spaces on both boats but they sale frequently.
The canal hopper stops near the information centre, the first windmill museum and the final windmill museum and the floating exhibition. You can hop on and off as often as you like. It’s a great option if you can’t walk the 1 mile each way from the visitors centre to the final museum.
There is also a cruiser boat which is the one we chose to ride. This one goes a little further past the last windmill and you also have a guide who tells you all about the history of Kinderdijk and the windmills. This ride takes approximately 30 minutes. We all enjoy it including our 6 and 9 year old daughters.
Is Kinderdijk pram-friendly?
Yes, there are plenty of smooth paths, and ramps to the Wisboom pumping station. We even saw prams on the boats.
Where to next?
No visit to the Netherlands with kids should be complete without a visit to Efteling. Find my Efteling review here.
How about learning about nature next at a nearby natural history museum? Find out more here – Visiting Naturalis museum, Leiden with kids.
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