Haarlem

It turns out some trains are air conditioned but only the ones in the morning. Luckily,  Haarlem is a short 20 minute trip from Amsterdam.

Haarlem is a delightful town, just like everyone says. Besides the architecture,  the main attraction is a huge cathedral, St. Bavo, on the main square. We were lucky to hear someone play a tune on the organ. Both Chopin and Mozart played concerts on that organ. 

The original church from 1245 was Catholic, then the expanded church was Protestant, now it's Catholic again. They have services and also concerts in the church.

St. Bavo

Haarlem is often described as a shopping haven and it's easy to see why. There are all kinds of shops lining several streets. A lot of upscale stores but also local specialty shops.  Since things looked cheaper than in Amsterdam, I wonder whether people just go there to shop. They have a huge market, too, but it's open on Saturday only.

Harlem Main Square

There are two parts to the Frans Hals museum in Haarlem. We went to the one on the square and asked if his paintings are there and were told that part was a contemporary art museum. We walked to the other part which was a long walk away to see what we thought would be a museum full of his paintings. There are some of his paintings there serving as an "inspiration " for several contemporary pieces. I can understand that they want to display local artists but they also felt the need to explain their work. In one room, there was a Hals' painting  of some men at a meeting and 2 other contemporary paintings, one abstract, and the other a picture of a room with no people but a small version of the abstract hanging on the wall. The explanation was these two artists studied the Hals painting for weeks and then created their paintings with the exact configuration of the Hals painting. Somehow, we didn't quite understand how gray swirls represented Hals' bright colors.Every room was like that. The saving grace of that museum was the a/c.

It was sweltering once again and sunny. In the evening, there was a brief thunderstorm and then light rain. Since it was raining,  we decided to go somewhere close for dinner. At the end of the street is an Italian restaurant that gets mixed review1s. When we walked up to the door, probably looking like drowned rats, a young man came out and said they only take reservations now. I don't know how he knew we spoke English and didn't have reservations.

We ended up going to a restaurant very close to the hotel that we thought just served breakfast and lunch. It turned out to be a restaurant connected to a small hotel and most of the patrons were staying there. We could tell because they didn't have dripping raincoats. The restaurant,  Joost, serves authentic Dutch food. We had to ask what stamppot is before we ordered. It's mashed potatoes with vegetables and sometimes bits of fruit smashed into the mashed. I had lamb stew which came in a small pot next to the mashed potatoes.  Mine had beets, little pieces of apple and some kinds of greens. Lola had a piece of veal served next to mashed with tomatoes and arugula. Stamppot is a interesting concept. If you make it, you can just put two things on the plate but get the benefits of 3.