Hotel Inntel Zaandam travel tips and stories. Vacations ideas, cruises, spa and resorts

The Hotel Inntel in Zaandam, Netherlands looks like a pileup of of traditional Dutch houses, all painted in bright greens and blue colours with windows and roofs pulling and pushing viewer’s eye. The Hotel Inntel Zaandam is a madcap fairytale of a building. In fact, this 12-storey structure is, for a while, hard to take in. It looks like a trick, a conjuring act. The hotel is also a quirky addition to the skyline of Zaandam, capital of the Zaanstad region and a town best known for its cocoa, biscuits and Europe’s first McDonald’s.

The hotel, which cost rises not from some freakishly isolated site, but from a new development of traditional streets lined with  traditional buildings. This might not be to everyone’s taste, but these streets and buildings root the hotel in an urban flowerbed that seems all of a piece. The core of the hotel is concrete, while the “houses” that rise up it are timber and clapboard, meaning that many of the rooms, especially the suites, really do feel like individual and even authentic houses. The city’s planners gave the hotel the green light because, although a little unusual, it fitted into the area’s overall design. The hotel opens its doors in march 2010 and includes 160 stylish rooms, meeting and party facilities up to 350 persons and a brasserie- restaurant with a terrace on the water. To relax during your stay the hotel will also offer a wellness centre with swimming pool, fitness, sauna and steam bath.