Today’s
trip up the Ringvaart was a great contrast to yesterday – hardly another boat
to be seen all the way to Haarlem. A few bridges to negotiate, but we never
seemed to wait more than 10 or 15 minutes. Today’s activity was mainly confined
to seniors – among other things they like rowing, both sexes:
We sailed
into Haarlem just before lunchtime, and it is a very attractive town, both from
the water and further towards the centre:
We chose a
mooring that we hope will be reasonably quiet, on the advice on one of our
waterways guides: cheerful bells every quarter, however.
Surprisingly,
a carved foot overlooks the bridge where we are:
After lunch
we set off for a preliminary exploration, with solving our internet issue the
top priority. After doing that without great difficulty (we hope), the Great
Church our first and obvious tourism target:
The town
hall is the other side of the square, and there had been a market in the
morning.
Inside the church we admired both its immense height, and also the
famous 18th century organ, that apparently made the 10-year-old
Mozart squeal with delight when he played it. Handel also had a go, but was
presumably more restrained in his reactions.
The gothic
ceiling is panelled and painted, in a way we had not seen before:
And model ships
were presented by local shipping companies, probably as some kind of votive
offering.
Next
destination was the art nouveau railway station - not the most obvious sight-seeing attraction, but it is the oldest in Holland. We dropped in at one of the city's several almshouses
on the way:
The station
was a little disappointing – we couldn’t get into the old part, and traces of
the original seemed confined to a few tiled wall scenes:
Tomorrow we
will do the Franz Hals museum, but meanwhile here are a couple more Saskia
interiors:
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