Haarlem and Bulb Fields
Saturday, April 21We drove to Haarlem this morning through an area of bulb fields, primarily hyacinths because most of tulips were not in bloom yet. We stopped at a large nursery where they had a number of beautiful flowers and a field of hyacinths of different colors.
John Anton
John Anton
In Haarlem we first went to the Frans Hals Museum to see the masterpieces there. The painting most representative of Hals in this museum is one of his paintings of the civic guards.
In most of the rooms there were also spectacular flower arrangements.
John Anton
On our way into the city square, we found a small restaurant where we had
tomato soup and uitsmuiters(fried egg and ham on toast), a standard Dutch
lunch.When we got to the main square we were disappointed to see a carnival set up there, so we couldn't really get good views of the buildings. We then walked a short distance to the Teyler's Museum, which had many items of scientific interest(electrostatic generators, fossils, etc), but also two rooms of paintings. One room had many examples of artists of the Hague School .
One of our guidebooks had mentioned that on Saturday afternoons in St. Bavo's Kerk there would be an organ concert on the great Müller organ which Handel and Mozart(as a child) had played. But that was not the case that day. So we spent some time looking around at the church.
John Anton
John Anton
Later we drove out of Haarlem towards the seacoast town of Zandvoort for a quick look at the water and the dunes. On the way back to Leiden,we did see one beautiful flower field.
On to Delft.