From Wikitravel

Haarlem [1] is a capital of the North Holland province, situated in the west of the Netherlands on the river Spaarne.

Contents 1 Understand 2 Get in 3 Get around 4 See 5 Do 6 Buy 7 Eat 8 Drink 9 Sleep 10 Get out

Understand

Haarlem is the center of a flower-growing district and the export point for tulip bulbs. Many people commute to nearby Amsterdam.

Get in

Haarlem is connected on the main train line between Amsterdam and The Hague. It takes about 15 minutes to travel from Amsterdam by train. If you are adventurous and have a bike, it would take an average cyclist around an hour to cycle from the centre of Amsterdam.

Get around

Haarlem is best walked on foot. There's buses taking you from the trainstation to the city center and back every few minutes.

See

• Teylers' Museum
• Frans Hals Museum The only good memory of the painter Toulouse-Lautrec about the Netherlands.
• Corrie ten Boom museum has free guided tours (in English and Dutch) of the ten Boom house. Tourists can stand in the "hiding place" where Jews were hidden from the Nazis, reminiscent of the Anne Frank house in Amsterdam.

Do

Visit the Teylers Museum which is the oldest public museum in the Netherlands. The museum hosts a collection of fossils (among which the famous Haarlem specimen of Archaeopteryx), minerals, historical scientific instruments and works of art, exhibited in a 19th century manner.

The Patronaat is Haarlem's largest venue for live music. Their fridays and saturdays are dance nights and generally well visited.

Buy

Haarlem is a popular city for shopping in the region. The Grote Houtstraat, the main shopping street, has most of the obvious shops. The surrounding streets (Kleine Houtstraat and Gierstraat) house smaller shops, where you can browse or buy everything from high end bicycles to teapots.

Shops are open monday to saturday. Many shops in the city center also open every first sunday of the month.

Eat

Drink

Beerbrewing has been a very important industry for Haarlem. The historical Haarlem's beer, recreated in 1995 is Jopenbier or Jopen.

Sleep

The Haarlem hostel (Jan Gijzenpad 3) is located in the north west corner of the city. It's by far the cheapest place to stay, but quite a few miles away from the city center.

Get out

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