Amsterdam, Netherlands

 Last day of touring for the trip.....and this one has lots of photos....

I had read about a nearby town, Haarlem, that is just a short train ride away.  It has some interesting sites and is supposed to be similar to Amsterdam.

Off to the train station...easy to navigate. 

Easily found our platform  and 5 minutes later we were on our way, 

Leaving town with several tracks 

Soon out in the country a bit.

Still lots of water.

Station in Haarlem  was lovely with lots of old wood and iron work.

Using Google maps we navigated thru some nice parks. 

I was surprised to see lots of chestnuts on the ground. 

Canals near the city streets. Not as compact as Amsterdam. 

My first target was the St. Baro cathedral....here we ran into a bit of an issue.  We were getting conflicting  information from Google. Some searches said the church was open, other searches said the church opened at 1pm.  The church in front of us definitely  opened at 1pm....it was 12:15 so we had to find something to do for 45 minutes...

The front of the church - we will climb these towers later when we actually do our tour.

So we went to a nearby fish kiosk and got a snack.

Set up right by a canal.  I couldn't resist sampling a new Fanta flavor  - hard to read but it says "Exotic flavor".  It actually was yummy, some sort or pomegranate  guava berry citrus mix.

We walked back to the church after the snack....first we were directed to walk up the extremely steep stairs to the towers. Note there is no handrail...I was careful  not to stumble, especially on the way down.

We had to cross from one tower to the other, walking on a boardwalk that is the attic above the cathedral  ceiling...a little wobbly and spooky for a public path!

But interesting to see. 

The bells in one of the towers.

At the top, there was an outside viewing tower.  Lovely view of the city.

After a break at the top, time to climb down the tower to see the inside of the cathedral. 

We took an audio tour and it was very interesting. 

Another view of some of the tower stairs.

Lovely cathedral. 

We wandered about 20 minutes to the old town square  where we stopped at a restaurant  to share a small fish and chips...yeah, we will start eating better once we get settled at home! 

Walking away from the square, it's just amazing  how many bikes there are!

This intricately decorated building  is actually  a McDonald's if you look for the M in the window 

We saw the spires for this church as we walked...did a quick  Google search and it too is called St Baro cathedral....that explains our earlier difficulties  with our Google search. Long story, but this one is from medieval times and is now often referred to as the Grote Kerk or "big church". This one used to be Cathotic, but was changed to Protestant  when being Catholic was a crime....and then over 100 years ago, the Catholics built the first one we visited earlier...confusing?  (I actually  think this one was the one I was aiming to visit when I did my planning much earlier)  anywhoooo, it was a lovely church!

The pipe organ was beautiful! 

Up until 1831, the church interior floor was the buring place for high status people. These slabs are their tombstones! 

Luckily, someone else was playing the organ while we were there!

Last thing on the list was to see a windmill right on town!  Walked thru a residential area. 

Walked right past a gas station.  Very compact right on a street.  I guess it is not as well utilized  as the gas hungry vehicles in the States. 

We found the windmill, but we were about done with our touring.....a few miles under our feet once again today.

Walking back to the train station, wow, double decker bike storage!

Easily caught the next tstronghold. Minutes later back to Amsterdam  central station, don't ya love public transit?

We'll have to pack and get ready for departure tomorrow morning.  Another great trip!