I had always been curious about Haarlem. Jo always talked about how beautiful it was so I jumped at the chance to see it. Off to Amstelveen bus station and caught the number weet ik veel to Haarlem Central Station.

Haarlem is the capital of the province of North Holland and is situated at the northern edge of the Randstad, one of the most populated metropolitan areas in Europe. Haarlem had a population of 155,758 in 2014. It is a 15-minute train ride from Amsterdam, and many residents commute to the country’s capital for work. I got this from Wikipedia by the way.

Its a nice place. We made our way slowly to the Central market place which is dominated by the enormous St Bavo Cathedral. It was a good place to chill with a coffee while the girls shopped. My shopping enthusiasm lasted about 10 minutes which is quite good for me. Found a great coffee shop for lunch (not the Amsterdam kind of coffee shop just to be clear). Here the waiting staff all had some kind of disability and so obviously someone was giving them a chance in life. So nice to see. The fact i ordered drinks when i should have been ordering food didn’t go down too well – maybe some autistic stuff going on. Anyway I got the drink so that was the main thing . . .

Saw a beautiful hofje. A hofje is basically a courtyard with houses built around – built to house (normally) women with no means to pay. So essentially these are the equivalent of our state houses.

All in all a very nice day trip. Beautiful city.