Day 10 ~ Haardly Enough Haarlem

Today we celebrated the Netherlands by getting out of Amsterdam and into Haarlem. We’d heard wonderful things – our friend Ted called Haarlem “Amsterdam without the tourists,” and travel writers we follow are also big fans. So expectations were high, but you really can’t anticipate what it’s going to feel like in an absurdly lovely place until you’re there. Haarlem was utterly captivating.

We stepped out of the train station onto a modern little street with a well-loved cafe that we were excited to visit. This was one of Stef’s favorite cafes ever, with an appealing little grocery, a vast reading room, and a workspace that (almost) makes you want to work. And of course foam art in the cappucino.

If you know Daniel and Stef, you know we love a cat. We were thrilled to see that our Amsterdam apartment includes this original painting:

The photo doesn’t begin to capture the scale of the thing; it’s about a meter wide and long (thanks, metric system). We’ve loved our trip but we were very excited to meet some European cats, and this trip has been woefully short on those. Undeterred, we went straight to the place with kat in the name: Jippie’s Kattenkafe. We spent an hour with some great cats, particularly a ginger named Fester.

Catisfied, we were ready to explore the city. Friends, Haarlem was absolutely gorgeous. There was one friendly street after another lined with appealing shops and cafes, residential neighborhoods with curling vines, and sunny canals ringed with ancient gabled buildings. We were hooked.

The Netherlands is full of hofjes – you’ll recall that we went to the Bejinhof in Amsterdam, a former nunnery that is now a tranquil oasis in the busy city. Haarlem also has a hofje that welcomes polite visitors, where we were greeted by a pair of friendly creamsicle kitties!

We headed to lunch, which was a well-reviewed canalside cafe with this view:

We had a fig jam and goat cheese sandwich, pumpkin lentil soup, and truffle frites:

We watched the bridges raise/swing out a couple of times, which was interesting to see.

Then we headed to Teylers Museum, a really wonderful museum that was exactly what we were hoping for. This was a grownups oriented science museum in a magnificent setting. There was a room of fossils, a room of scientific instruments, a geology room, and some rooms with paintings. We were there for the last day of their summer program (lucky us!) so we were some of the last visitors of the year allowed to go up to the library:

It was very cool to see a museum that brought to life the Netherland’s role as the hotbed of the Enlightenment. We reflected a lot on what a thrilling time that must have been, with the wealthy turning their attention to science and discovery rather than the crass materialism of our current age.

Stef’s favorite part was that Teyler’s house was now a museum piece – Stef will always enjoy a house turned museum.

This wallpaper!

Maybe the only thing Stef likes more than a house turned museum is a miniature of that house, in a museum! It’s so good that we had trouble picking out which pictures were the real house, and which were the miniature.

Happy, but nursing a serious case of Museum Feet, we headed to the Grote Markt with its magnificent cathedral to refresh and enjoy the welcoming square.

We were running out of time, although we felt we could have stayed a million years. There were some ramparts we were excited to check out just a little bit north of the train station, so we thought we’d walk along there, then hop on the train.

When we got to De Bulwarken (a name we got a lot of mileage out of), it completely blew us away. Stef in particular was anticipating a wall running up to a canal, and instead, they’d turned it into this incredible park. The canal curved gracefully in a star pattern, and welcoming green lawns and waving willow trees framed the sparkling water.

We’ve loved ending our days with a walk in a park, and what a park it was! And that was it. We headed back toward the train station, and were ready to call it a day.

But then…our way to the train station took us by another nearby park. There was an insane number of bikes there. And what was that music? Once again, we followed our ears, and were drawn to a massive gathering in a huge green space ringed by food trucks. We’d stumbled into some kind of festival. Hundreds if not a thousand Haarlem residents had come out with friends, kids, and dogs to enjoy some cart food and hang out in the beautiful September sunshine. This was worth a change in plans. We settled in with a pesto and sundried tomato galette, and a haloumi wrap, and did some people-watching.

Our hearts were full and now the day really was done. In one way after another, Haarlem blew past our expectations. We couldn’t have been happier with this enchanting place, and we hope there’s a world where we can spend more time in Haarlem.