Haarlem - a lovely city full of cute alleys, shops and places (Holidays @ Wijk aan Zee Part 3)

Here are some further impressions from nice places we visited during our holidays. Especially Haarlem is a very beautiful city I recommend everyone to visit!

The city itself is located in the province "Holland" and therefore not far away from our vacation spot. So we used a "park and ride" parking place and went the last part of the route by train. I recommend not driving into the city by car! Parking in Haarlem is expensive as fuck.

After some minutes of walking we reached the heart of the town with lots of beautiful alleys, piazzas and small, exceptional and sometimes strange shops.

We counted more than one shop with antiques, there are even very specialised ones which only sell christian figures. For us that was a strong contrast to our hometown Hagen where 90% of the shops are either cheap bakers, nail salons or mainstream clothing stores.
Most of the alleys end in a large square with many cute cafés.

We decided it was time for a short lunch and beer break so we chose a nice café in front of the "Grote Kerk" or also called St.-Bavokerk. This big Protestant (former Catholic) cathedral located on the central market square and was built between 1370 and 1520. You can't escape the omnipresent Gothic architecture of this huge building. We were quiet impressed while having lunch in the shadow of the church. But next time, please use your energy and bricks to build an amusement park ;-)
I'm joking - obviously - but is a temple of god so different to a temple of capitalism? People seem to like temples.

With hunger and thirst out of the way we continued strolling through the city, did some shopping and finally went back home. We enjoyed this trip and we will definitely come back again!

Did you ever visit Haarlem? It doesn't always have to be Amsterdam, there are nice smaller cities as well :)
Please share your thoughts about this city in the comments!

If you liked this post please consider reading the other parts as well:

• Part 1 - Huge and beautiful beach
• Part 2 - Lovely dune landscape