13th Nov - Travels further afield
Over the last few days, we've done some travels outside of Amsterdam. Using the trams and trains has been very easy. Luckily we're in the first zone for trams to Centraal Station, although you still need to use 2 vouchers on the Strippenkarte (which seems strange).
On Wednesday, we travelled to Haarlem. It's only 15 mins away on an express train. We noticed that the people seemed more dressed up than those in Amsterdam. The main square, Grote Market is very impressive and had some interesting buildings including the stunning St. Bavo's Cathedral. The weird thing is that around the bottom of the church, built right into the walls of the church are many shopfronts. These date back to the 1500's/ 1600's. It seems that the original church burnt down in 1395 and due to waxing and waning community wealth it took nearly 150yrs to replace the current St. Bavo's church to its former glory. The shops around the base helped raise funds for the Church through rents. It has a very opulent Organ as well.
Town hall and Fish Market (turned into modern art gallery)
St. Doms cathedral and small shops
The very large organ at St Bavo Cathedral
From there, we explored the local streets and also saw De Hallen (modern art gallery photo exhibition) as well as Franz Hals Museum, named after one of the most important artists in Haarlem's history. Between 1600 and 1635 there were 140 painters working regularly in Haarlem and they produced over 100,000 paintings - quite phenomenal.
On Thursday, we travelled to The Hague. It drizzled most of the day unfortunately but we still managed to see the famous Van Meiris paintings at Marithuis. He is really spectacular. Van Meiris' expertise is in painting the very finest detail of fabrics and expressions. This was in the 17th C when the queens, kings and courtiers wore very elaborate outfits. After seeing incalculable number of museums of supreme Masters of the art, I have to say Van Meiris is definitely a cut above. We had lunch in a trendy cafe, Deli Deluca and enjoyed a beautiful chicken salad and chorizo panini, before heading back on the express train (1hr, 19Euro return) to Amsterdam.
On Saturday, we travelled to Utrecht, only 30mins by fast train south of Amsterdam. We got lucky with the weather and whilst it was a cool 12 degrees, it didn't rain. We explored the town on foot using a Walking tour recommended by the Visitor Centre which took us through the beautiful Dom (Cathedral) but also through some intriguing backstreets and into secluded (but open to the public) gardens like Mariaplaats. The town had a party feel as they were celebrating pre-Christmas (which happens on December 5 as well as another festival on December 25). The canals are also really beautiful and interestingly, when the town first tried to 'keep back the water' by developing a lock and later a dam, it raised the ground level in a strange way and so they now have 2 levels of shops along the canal. The very bottom level and the 'regular' street level.
Mark having lunch &
We also tried some traditional Dutch oliebollen which are like donuts only not quite as sweet. We had a plain one and an apple filled one, but they offer rum & raisin, raisin and banana ones as well!
On Wednesday, we travelled to Haarlem. It's only 15 mins away on an express train. We noticed that the people seemed more dressed up than those in Amsterdam. The main square, Grote Market is very impressive and had some interesting buildings including the stunning St. Bavo's Cathedral. The weird thing is that around the bottom of the church, built right into the walls of the church are many shopfronts. These date back to the 1500's/ 1600's. It seems that the original church burnt down in 1395 and due to waxing and waning community wealth it took nearly 150yrs to replace the current St. Bavo's church to its former glory. The shops around the base helped raise funds for the Church through rents. It has a very opulent Organ as well.
Town hall and Fish Market (turned into modern art gallery)
St. Doms cathedral and small shops
The very large organ at St Bavo Cathedral
From there, we explored the local streets and also saw De Hallen (modern art gallery photo exhibition) as well as Franz Hals Museum, named after one of the most important artists in Haarlem's history. Between 1600 and 1635 there were 140 painters working regularly in Haarlem and they produced over 100,000 paintings - quite phenomenal.
On Thursday, we travelled to The Hague. It drizzled most of the day unfortunately but we still managed to see the famous Van Meiris paintings at Marithuis. He is really spectacular. Van Meiris' expertise is in painting the very finest detail of fabrics and expressions. This was in the 17th C when the queens, kings and courtiers wore very elaborate outfits. After seeing incalculable number of museums of supreme Masters of the art, I have to say Van Meiris is definitely a cut above. We had lunch in a trendy cafe, Deli Deluca and enjoyed a beautiful chicken salad and chorizo panini, before heading back on the express train (1hr, 19Euro return) to Amsterdam.
On Saturday, we travelled to Utrecht, only 30mins by fast train south of Amsterdam. We got lucky with the weather and whilst it was a cool 12 degrees, it didn't rain. We explored the town on foot using a Walking tour recommended by the Visitor Centre which took us through the beautiful Dom (Cathedral) but also through some intriguing backstreets and into secluded (but open to the public) gardens like Mariaplaats. The town had a party feel as they were celebrating pre-Christmas (which happens on December 5 as well as another festival on December 25). The canals are also really beautiful and interestingly, when the town first tried to 'keep back the water' by developing a lock and later a dam, it raised the ground level in a strange way and so they now have 2 levels of shops along the canal. The very bottom level and the 'regular' street level.
Mark having lunch &
We also tried some traditional Dutch oliebollen which are like donuts only not quite as sweet. We had a plain one and an apple filled one, but they offer rum & raisin, raisin and banana ones as well!
posted by Most Liveable at 4:01 AM
2 Comments:
cute hat Mark you look nice and qarm, still no windmills. luv Flos
hi uncle mark & aunty tammy, gran has just showed me ure blog
brodie
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