Cali 2 NL

The unusually beautiful weather here was already starting to change, so we decided to go check out the nearby beach (and town) of Zaandvoort. Of course, it’s October here, and the beach is on the cold North Sea, so we weren’t expecting to surf and sunbathe.

Apparantly we arrived on race day. Well, “qualifying day” is more like it. A major A1 race was set for the next day, and everybody was headed to the race track to watch the cars qualify. Unfortunately, tickets were too expensive to get in on the action.

The beach was fun, mostly because it was not like the beaches back home. There was one sad, lonely palm tree.

The sand was soft, though, there were cafe’s on the beach, and surfers in the cold water. I guess it’s pretty crazy in the summer, with hundreds of colored tents on the beach and topless sun-bathers. Alas, no such luck today.

Where the bech lacked palm trees, it made up with shells. The beach was covered in them. Lyss had a hard time keeping her eyes off the ground during the entire stroll. Here’s a nice shot of the beach and water.

The beach was relatively empty, with the occasional
kid playing in the water or couple walking their dog. We stopped for some very tasty calimari from a stand just off the beach.

We then strolled around the cute beach town, which was all decorated for the next day’s race.

From there, we headed off to Haarlem. The American Harlem was named after this place, mostly due to it’s proximity to New Amsterdam (now New York). Our first stop was the Grote Markt (big market). It’s the town’s main square, located just in front of the very impressive Grote Kerk (big church). Being saturday, there actually WAS a market in the Grote Markt. We perused the goods and picked up a cable so I can steal my neighbors TV

We then walked around the Grote Kerk and went inside. As we stared at the massive organ I leaned over to Alyssa and said “you’re standing on people’s graves!”. She jumped up and looked around, but there was no escape. The entire floor was paved with stone tombs. It was pretty funny, although it took me about 10 minutes to pry her off a bench and start touring around again.

Thankfully I brought my Rick Steves book, since the church pamphlet was pretty worthless. We saw the grave of Frans Halls (whose works are in a museum in Haarlem), the beautiful wooden ceiling, the dog-whippers chapel (gotta reward those dog-whippers!), and the massive church organ.

It’s no wonder that both Handel and Mozart were impressed by the loud and ornate pipes which dominate one end of the church. Thankfully there was someone playing as we entered, and it definitely gave some extra ambiance to the place. Here’s a very short video clip of the organ in action (click here).

We then stopped for a beer and coffee at Cafe 1900, a very old turn of the century style bar with leather-strap-driven ceiling fans and some very interesting bathrooms. After that, we wandered around town and discovered that it feels a lot like a miniature, more laid back Amsterdam. There is even a Red Light Disctrict that we strolled through, and it can only be described as “cute”. There are maybe 5 windows for girls to sit in, and one of them was empty, so lyss took some (usually forbidden) photographs of the rooms.

Then we took off for home. You can click any of the above photos for larger versions (as usual), and also browse picture’s of the whole day’s exploits here.