On Sunday, April 24 it was time to say goodbye to my beloved Paris. This trip is about new experiences and although we have been to Amsterdam twice it has been a very long time, and we were there so briefly we didn’t see much. Haarlem is very close to Amsterdam and I wanted the smaller town experience after the larger cities on this trip. We had to take 3 trains to get to Amsterdam, changing (and changing stations, though close to each other) in Lille, France and again in Brussels. We got to Amsterdam and after spending too much time trying to buy a transportation card that we ended up not getting, we bought single one way tickets to Haarlem. It’s about a 15 minute train ride. Then we found out trains weren’t going to Haarlem today because of track work. We had to take a train to another station, then it took at least 20 minutes to find the bus to Haarlem. After it dropped us off at the train station we began walking to the house where we will be staying for the next week. We arrived about 1 1/2 hours later than expected and our Airbnb host was waiting for us. She’s a lovely lady and we really lucked out with this rental. It’s a 3 story house. She lives on the ground floor and we have the top two floors with a separate entrance. It’s very roomy and comfortable. Thankfully there’s a bathroom on both levels because the stairs are so steep I’d sure hate to have to use them in the middle of the night. After starting a load of laundry we went to the grocery store for some provisions.

This is flower season in the Netherlands and after two years of being locked down because of the coronavirus they are ready to make up for lost time. Today was the flower parade. I can’t remember where it started, but it took two hours to reach Haarlem, the ending point. I took a couple of pictures of floats on our way to the store, but I didn’t get a very good one because it was so crowded.

There is a fantastic square lined with restaurants and plenty of outdoor dining just around the corner from us. After getting fully settled in we set off to get a drink and a bite to eat. It was packed with people, but we finally found a table and enjoyed people watching and just being there. I took this photo as we were leaving. A number of people had left by then. I’m really looking forward to this week.