Instead of staying in Amsterdam proper, which is evidently even less car friendly than Brussels, our room for three nights is in the "suburb" of Haarlem, which has many of the charms of Amsterdam proper. We will be taking train into Amsterdam to spend a day there. Our hotel faces the Cathedral of St. Bavo, only a stone's throw from the hotel front entrance. Our room looks out on the Cathedral as well. Must be that somebody up there likes us.
Kidding with these statues in the eclectic hotel lobby:
Hotel Restaurant - very elaborate:
Our Room with a view of the church:
This was THE most comfortable bed of the entire trip!
Our view of cafe tables below our hotel window - earplugs were needed at night as the patrons were quite "happy".
Pam loved this dog bench near our hotel:
Pam in her new walking shoes:
Haarlem is full of bicyclists - going in all directions. This is the supermarket that we found a short walk from the hotel:
Some of the cafes and shops in the square around our hotel:
Pam found a couple of photo ops that she couldn't resist:
We
stopped in Antwerp to see the Cathedral of our Lady primarily because it
has on display several famous Rubens paintings which are ordinarily
housed in the Antwerp Museum of Fine Art, the museum being closed for
renovation until 2017. In fact the Cathedral also contains a surfeit of
other religious themed art by other masters as well, again due to the
museum's temporary closure. Actually, all of the paintings were
originally commissioned long ago for display in the Cathedral, so in a
real sense they have simply returned home for awhile.
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