When I first said that I planned a day trip by train out of Amsterdam, my sister was astonished. We were only going to be there five days, we wouldn’t have the time or the inclination to leave the city. I was adamant – I almost always take a day to see at least a glimpse of the country outside the big city. And then we got bored with Amsterdam and she took a shine to my idea of getting out.
The trouble was that the guidebook really wasn’t selling any of the other cities. November is not peak countryside season. We settled for Haarlem, on the grounds that if we hated it, it was a quick and cheap journey back.
And we didn’t hate it! We liked Haarlem!
Part of it is that when you take that step off the tourist track – when you leave a city like Amsterdam, for example – you immediately lose that feeling of pressure to do, see and enjoy. I had the same feeling the first time I went to Snæfellsnes. Amy likes that her friends and colleagues regard her as a bit of a maverick and a bold adventurer for simply going somewhere else (“Oh, wow! You did more than we did!”).
The day started with a trip into the mini supermarket under Centraal’s bus terminal, aka the breakfast shop. There are security guards roaming that shop, but friendly ones. Ones who spy a tourist carrying a cheese and ham toastie to the tills and remark “Oh, nice! Enjoy!” for no particular reason. That kept us giggling halfway to Haarlem.
Then the train was a double-decker. We sat upstairs. Obviously. The toastie-thing apparently wasn’t as tasty as promised – the filling was fine but the bread was too brioche-like. Photos were taken. She’s an avid selfie-taker and food photographer who puts about three photos of her trip on Instagram and makes no use of the other 1000, as far as I can see.
The trip to Haarlem was pretty short. We passed an IKEA and a lot of half-flooded fields and a few horses and then we were there. First impression of Haarlem: a non-descript generic bus station. Second impression of Haarlem: quiet, pleasant streets and the feeling that we’d made the right decision.
Our first stop was the cathedral and the main square – which is where I got a message to check my phone and discovered that my bank was panicking over my credit card and had locked it, so I sat down at the foot of a statue and phoned them. My hosting for this blog. That it’s been paid the last couple of years was no matter; they saw it and panicked. So I went through all the security questions, assured them it was fine and got my account unlocked again, only to stand up half-frozen.
The cathedral was closed until 1pm for a funeral so we went to get waffles and warm up while we waited, via all the back streets, finding at least four churches within a five minute walk.
The food was good. I had a Nutella pancake with pear juice and struggled with the knife and fork (I am an uncultured swine who lives off bread-based things I eat with my hands) and pear juice plus illicit Fanta quietly poured into the juice glass because it takes a lot of liquid to get that much Nutella down. Amy had a double waffle with Nutella, strawberries and piles of cream plus a DIY hipster made-for-Instagram hot chocolate. I rarely get to blog meals, I don’t eat them so this is an event for me.
We wandered back to the cathedral via the shopping street – no high street here, not really. That’s at the other end of town. These were the kind of shops where the clothes cost more each than my monthly salary and are the kind of beige-and-bland that are only worn by very rich women in their fifties and up. We had a look anyway, despite me in my Viking hat and her in her purple down jacket.
And then the cathedral! I’m no great judge of cathedrals but this one felt open and airy and bright, Amy disliked one of the stained glass windows and Mozart played the organ here on a tour in 1766 aged about ten. Mozart – right here, in this very cathedral!
Then we went back out and to the Pandora shop. Amy collects a charm when she goes to places and there are country-exclusive ones. She opted for the windmill, of course. I would have done too if I had a Pandora bracelet but my charm bracelet is an El Camino one and I’d ordered my Netherlands step before I left home.
We roamed the streets and accidentally came to the high street area. This could have been any town in any country, much busier, much noisier. We consulted the town map I’d picked up in the cathedral shop and decided to head for the windmill. You have to see windmills in the Netherlands. And a very pleasing windmill it was too, situated on the other side of the river.
With that done, we went back to the station to return to Amsterdam. We’d done nothing in particular – there’s nothing in particular to do in Haarlem – but it had been a nice place and and a pleasant day and we’d seen something outside Amsterdam and we had packing to do.
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