Haarlem

Haarlem is fifteen minutes from Amsterdam by train and a world away in temperament. The Grote Markt is one of the finest market squares in the Netherlands — dominated by the St. Bavokerk, a Gothic church whose organ was played by both Handel and the ten-year-old Mozart. The square fills with market stalls on Saturdays, and the surrounding streets hold independent boutiques, antiquarian bookshops, and brown cafes where the wood is dark and the beer is local.

The Frans Hals Museum occupies a seventeenth-century almshouse and contains the laughing, drinking, irreverent portraits that make Hals the most human of the Dutch Masters. Beyond the museum, Haarlem’s backstreets reward aimless wandering — hidden courtyards called hofjes, canal-side gardens, and the Teylers Museum, the oldest in the Netherlands, with a collection spanning fossils, scientific instruments, and Michelangelo drawings in a temple-like oval hall. The dunes and wide North Sea beach at Bloemendaal are a twenty-minute bike ride from the center, making Haarlem perhaps the only Dutch city where you can see a Vermeer and swim in the sea in the same afternoon.

When to go: April to May for tulip fields in bloom between Haarlem and Leiden. June to September for beach days and open-air concerts in the Haarlemmerhout park.