Haarlem and The Hague

Having been in Amsterdam less than two years ago, we had done a lot of the big sites, which gave us the opportunity to take two day trips out of town to Haarlem and The Hague.

Haarlem is very close to Amsterdam (only 15-20 minutes by train) and has become a kind of suburb for people looking to get out of the craziness of the big city. However, in the middle ages, Haarlem was an extremely important North Sea trading port, and in the 17th century home to Franz Hals one of the most important artists of the Dutch Golden Age. We decided to skip the Hals museum because there was a large Hals exhibit in Amsterdam, which meant the museum in Haarlem would have been a bit bare.

Instead, we headed to the Verwey Museum Haarlem, which in addition to some small art exhibits, had a truly impressive exhibit on the history of the city. Haarlem was a city that was run on a guild system: in order to work in a trade, you had to be a member of the guild for that trade. In addition, they closely controlled immigration to the city (easy to do with a walled city), and had extremely harsh sentences for lawbreakers. In the end, it sounded like a bit of a police state, but it was interesting to learn about a very different way of living. 

The exhibit was extensive, starting from the middle ages and going all the way through the current day, including an exhibit on WWII (a bit of a repeat from the Resistance Museum) and through a period in the 1960's and 1970's when Haarlem had a significant music scene. We saw several (loud) school groups at the museum, which makes sense for a great local history museum. 

One site that we walked by was the house of the Ten Boom family (now a museum). During the Nazi occupation of Haarlem beginning in 1942, the Ten Boom family hid hundreds of Jews and other refugees in their home upstairs from their watch shop, which was right on the main shopping street in Haarlem. Unfortunately, the family was betrayed in 1944 and several of them were killed in concentration camps.

Walking around the city, we also saw the Windmill De Adriaan, which was a distinctive part of the Haarlem skyline from when it was originally built in 1779 until it burned down in 1932. In 2002, the city rebuilt the windmill, which is now a tourist attraction. Shana also had to get a picture of this house, which seemed to be sloping dangerously, even having pulled away from the building next to it.

The Hague, which is the administrative center of The Netherlands, is about 45-50 minutes from Amsterdam. There, we visited the Eshcher Museum, which is housed in a former royal palace. Although Escher is not among our favorites, it was quite interesting to see his evolution from a more traditional artist toward his more well-known pieces depicting impossible structures and things turning into other things.

Another related exhibit of visual artists contained this globe, which appears to be totally reflective, but as you can see from the left photo is not. On the other hand, the right photo suggests it is reflective. Essentially we have no idea how the artst created this optical illusion.

After the museum, we found a fantastic and very authentic Italian restaurant, where we ate pasta despite our usual rule of not eating pasta outside of Italy. It was definitely worth it.

After lunch, we walked around the city, which is very pretty, although it is probably even nicer in better weather (a definite theme of this whole trip). Even so, The Hague had a good vibe to it.

Finally, on our last night in Amsterdam, we returned to a place we ate on our last visit to the city: Fromagerie Abraham Kef. There, we had a wonderful cheese tasting with very good French wine for dinner. On our way there, however, we had to take the ferry from the main part of Amsterdam to the north part of the city. During this voyage, we saw some of the strongest rain of the entire trip.

And that concluded our trip to Paris and the low countries. The flight home wasn't the best, supporting the general rule for local travel -- trains can be more comfortable and pleasant.

Hasta pronto,

Jeff and Shana