We hit another place on our to do list for the Netherlands. We had been told that Haarlem is a nice town and worth a visit so we decided to take advantage of the window of good weather we had today to visit it. Haarlem is about 20 minutes by train south of Amsterdam.
Haarlem is a mid-size city and like most Dutch cities easy to walk. Part of the reason it is so easy to walk in the Netherlands is because everything is so flat. Today my watch tells me we walked 6.6 miles and only climbed the equivalent of 5 flights of stairs. That is flat.
We made a quick pass thru town and hit some of the highlights. The town hall was open to visitors. The most interesting thing for me was the painting in the room that was used for jury deliberations. It contained a large picture of a judge having his eye gouged out for not being just in his verdicts. Quite a warning for potential jurists.
We visited the church in the town square. It began life as a Catholic Cathedral, but during the reformation had become a Protestant Church. While it is a working church it seems that it has also become something of a community concert hall. One of the side chapels inside the church had even been converted to a coffee shop-something I have never seen anywhere else in Europe. So I guess you can listen to Sunday service while sipping a latte in the coffee corner.
The church organ is well renown for its sound. Mozart is said to have played the organ on his travels. We were hoping to see a concert there, but unfortunately the timing didn’t allow for it.
We criss-crossed the town a couple of times to look at different interesting buildings. The town had a solid feel to it and the people were fun to watch as always. We have even gotten better about staying out of the way of the bicycles as they zoom past. I think we got thru the day without having a bell rung at us in annoyance by a bicyclist, (even though we did almost get run over by a city bus).
Our final stop in Haarlem was at another old church. This church had been converted to a brewery. Jopen brewery felt more like a brewery from Portland than the traditional places we usually go to. In fact their specialties seemed to tilt heavily towards IPA’s with Cascade hops that are grown in Washington and Oregon. The beer was good.
On the train back we discussed a stop in Amsterdam for another walk, but instead Ton remembered a good chicken joint one stop from the campground. So we had fried chicken to go in François to end our day.