Haarlem

This morning,Gordon dropped us, and Geertje, at the train station in Utrecht. Doug wanted to book and buy our train tickets for German, so we took our queue ticket and waited patiently gor our number to come up. That done, we traipsed the bewildering station to find the correct platform for travel to Amsterdam.where we changed for Haarlem. (Geertje grew up there). The train was a double decker, fast and quiet.




Haarlem is an old town and very photogenic. Just point the camera for pictures like these.



Visiting a Dutch town would not be complete without sampling a smoked eel or herring. We had a smoked eel (gerookt paling).



Later in the day we joined the 'English' tour of Corrie ten Boom's house. For those who haven't heard of her, she was part of a family that hid Jews from the Germans in WW2. 6 people hid behind this false wall for up to 2 days. Access was via the hatch in the cupboard on the left.



Haarlem, has a very big church, St Bravos. (Built in the 1300's.) The pipe organ was huge. Mozart played the organ in 1766 (he was 10 years old at the time) Handel played this organ as well. Frans Hals was buried here.





People on bikes are interesting! Imagine if everyone who has left their bike at the train station each brought a car!
It appears that the small child on the front of this tandem is steering.

We are off to the north of Holland today to the area where we lived in 1970. (Kristina was born in Hoorn.)