Amsterdammers may well tell you that there’s nothing remotely worth seeing outside their own city, but the fact is you’re spoilt for choice, with fast and efficient rail connections putting about a third of the country within easy reach on a day-trip. There are any number of places you can reach, including most of the towns of the Randstaad conurbation that stretches south and east of Amsterdam and encompasses the country’s other big cities, The Hague, Utrecht and Rotterdam, but we’ve picked a few of the closest highlights. The easiest trip you could make is to Haarlem, just fifteen minutes away by train, a pleasant provincial town that is home to the outstanding Frans Hals Museum. There’s also the showcase of the country’s flower growers, the Keukenhof Gardens, worth visiting in spring and summer, while to the north of Amsterdam the most obvious targets are the old seaports bordering the freshwater IJsselmeer and Markermeer lakes, formerly – before the enclosing dykes were put in – the choppy and unpredictable saltwater Zuider Zee. No trains venture out along this coast, but it’s an easy bus ride from Amsterdam, as well as to the beguiling one-time shipbuilding centre of Edam. Edam is, of course, famous for its cheese, but its open-air cheese market is not a patch on that of Alkmaar, an amiable small town forty minutes by train northwest from Amsterdam.
An easy fifteen-minute train journey (6 hourly) from Amsterdam’s Centraal Station, Haarlem has a very different feel from its big-city neighbour. Once a flourishing cloth-making centre, the town avoided the worst excesses of industrialization and nowadays it’s an easily absorbed place with an attractive centre studded with fine old buildings. The Grote Kerk (Mon–Sat 10am–4pm €2), right in the centre of town on the Grote Markt, is well worth seeing, a soaring Gothic church with a magnificent eighteenth-century organ. But the real draw is the outstanding Frans Hals Museum, located in the Oudemannhuis or almshouse where the artist spent his last and, for some, his most brilliant years. Located at Groot Heiligland 62 (Tues–Sat 11am–5pm, Sun noon–5pm €10 023/511 57 75 www.franshalsmuseum.nl), the museum is a five-minute stroll south from the Grote Markt – take pedestrianized Warmoesstraat and then Schagchelstraat and keep straight ahead.
The museum has a number of works by Haarlem painters other than Hals, with canvases by Jan van Scorel, Karel van Mander and Cornelis Cornelisz van Haarlem. Chief among the paintings by Hals is the set of “Civic Guard” portraits with which he made his name. Displayed together, these make a powerful impression, alongside the artist’s later, darker works, the most notable of which are the twin Regents and Regentesses of the Oudemannenhuis itself.
The pancake-flat fields extending south from Haarlem towards Leiden are the heart of the Dutch bulbfields, whose bulbs and blooms support a billion-dollar industry and some ten-thousand growers, as well as attracting tourists in droves. The small town of Lisse, halfway between Leiden and Haarlem, is home to the Keukenhof Gardens, the largest flower gardens in the world. Its name literally meaning “kitchen garden”, the site is the former estate of a fifteenth-century countess, who used to grow herbs and vegetables for her dining table. Some seven million flowers are on show for their full flowering period, complemented, in case of especially harsh winters, by 5000 square metres of glasshouses holding indoor displays. You could easily spend a whole day here, swooning among the sheer abundance of it all, but to get the best of it you need to come early, before the tour buses pack the place. There are several restaurants in the extensive grounds, and well-marked paths take you all the way through the gardens, which specialize in daffodils, hyacinths and tulips.
To get to the Keukenhof by public transport from Amsterdam, take the train to Leiden (every 20min) and then bus #54 (every 15min; 30min) from the adjacent bus station. You can also purchase a combination ticket (€21) at the tourist offices in Amsterdam, The Hague, Schiphol airport and Haarlem or at the Connexxion sales points, which include bus transport from these locations and the entrance fee to the Keukenhof.
The former fishing village of Volendam is the largest of the Markermeer towns and was once something of an artists’ retreat, visited by Renoir and Picasso in its day and always a favoured location for local painters. The Volendams Museum, on the edge of the town centre at Zeestraat 41 (daily 10am–5pm €2.50) has lots of local work on display, not least a series of mosaics made up of 11 million cigar bands, the work of a nutty local artist, and the comfy downstairs café of the Hotel Spaander on the waterfront is crammed full of seaside scenes and portraits contributed in lieu of rent over the years.
Volendam is reachable by bus #110 and #118 from outside Amsterdam Centraal Station; the journey takes half an hour.
Stuck out in the freshwater Markermeer, the tiny island of Marken was pretty much a closed community, supported by a small fishing industry, until its road connection to the mainland was completed in 1957. Nowadays, the fishing has all but disappeared, though the island – or rather its one and only village, Marken – retains a picturesque charm of immaculately maintained green wooden houses, clustered on top of artificial mounds first raised to protect the islanders from the sea. There are two main parts to the village: Havenbuurt, around the harbour, where the waterfront is dotted with souvenir shops, often staffed by locals in traditional costume; and the quieter Kerkbuurt, centred on the church, whose narrow lanes are lined by ancient dwellings and one-time eel-smoking houses.
You can take a ferry to Marken from Volendam (March–Oct daily 11am–5pm; every 30–45min €7 return); the journey takes 25 minutes. The ferries leave you right in the harbour. Or you can get there direct from Centraal Station on bus #111 (every 30min; 35min). The bus drops passengers beside the car park on the edge of Marken village, from where it’s a five-minute walk to the centre.
Considering the international fame of the red balls of cheese that carry its name, you might expect the village of Edam, just 12km or so up along the coast from Marken, to be jam-packed with tourists. In fact, Edam usually lacks the crowds of its island neighbour and remains a delightful, good-looking and prosperous little town of neat brick houses and slender canals. Nowadays, the one real crowd puller is Edam’s cheese market, held every Wednesday morning from July to late August on the Kaasmarkt (10.30am–12.30pm), but the real pleasure is in aimlessly wandering its streets and canals, and maybe renting a bike to cycle down to the water. Bike rental is available at Ronald Schot, Grote Kerkstraat 7 (029/937 2155 www.ronaldschot.nl); a day costs €8.50.
Bus #112 takes 40min to reach Edam from Centraal Station. The bus station is on the southwest edge of town, on Singelweg, a five-minute walk from the main square, Damplein.
Forty minutes north of Amsterdam by train, the small town of Alkmaar provides a pleasant glimpse of provincial Holland, with an old centre still surrounded by its moat, and a cluster of medieval and Renaissance-era buildings. It has some low-key things to see – the Biermuseum De Boom (Mon–Sat 1–4pm €3.50), above the bar of the same name, has three floors devoted to the art of making and distributing beer, and opposite the town’s main St Laurenskerk there’s a local museum, the Stedelijk Museum (Tues–Sat 10am–5pm, Sun noon–5pm €3), with paintings, maps and models of Alkmaar during its glory seventeenth-century years.
But the town is best known for its cheese market (mid-March to Sept Fri 10am–12.30pm), an ancient affair that these days ranks as one of the most extravagant tourist spectacles in the country. Cheese has been sold on the main square, Waagplein, since the 1300s, and although it’s no longer a serious commercial concern, the market continues to draw the crowds. If you want a good view, get here early, as by opening time visitors are already thick on the ground. The ceremony starts with the buyers sniffing, crumbling, and finally tasting each cheese, followed by intensive bartering. Once a deal has been concluded, the cheeses – golden discs of Gouda mainly – are borne away on ornamental carriers for weighing. The porters, who bear the carriers, wear white trousers and shirt plus a black hat whose coloured bands – green, blue, red or yellow – represent the four companies that comprise the cheese porters’ guild. Payment for the cheeses, tradition has it, takes place in the cafés around the square.
From Alkmaar’s train and bus station, it’s a ten-minute walk to the centre of town: keep straight outside the station along Spoorstraat, take the first right down Snaarmanslaan and then left at busy Geesterweg, which leads over the old city moat to St Laurenskerk. From the church, it’s another five minutes’ walk east along Langestraat to the tourist office, housed in the Waag on Waagplein.
Warmoesstraat 5, Haarlem
023/551 1564
Daily except Tues–10am–10pm
Trendy and colourful spot with an inspiring international menu offering everything from Peruvian ceviche to Italian saltimbocca for around €18.
Spuistraat 3, Edam
0299/371 671
Daily 6–10pm
This is a first-rate hotel restaurant, with an imaginative, modern menu using local and seasonal ingredients.
Hof van Sonoy 1, Alkmaar
072/512 1222
Mon–Wed 10am–9pm, Thurs 10am–9.30pm, Fri & Sat 10am–10pm, Sun 11am–9.30pm
Pretty good for both lunch and dinner, a delightfully restored medieval nunnery that does inexpensive omelettes and sandwiches during the day and tasty Dutch cuisine in the evening, with mains for €15–20.
Haven 35, Volendam
0299/363 705
Daily noon–9.30pm
This creaky old hotel right on the waterfront in Volendam is very much the hub of things in the town, with a nice bar for a drink or a coffee and a good brasserie serving lots of fishy specialities for lunch and dinner.
Warmoesstraat 18, Haarlem
023/532 6144
Mon 11am–4pm, Tues–Sat 11am–4pm & 5.30–10pm
Welcoming place that’s a good bet for both lunch and dinner, with burgers and salads during the day and a Mediterranean-inspired menu in the evening, featuring pasta with mussels and mixed antipasti. There’s a secluded garden too.
Havenbuurt 6, Marken
0299/601 302
Daily 11am–8.30pm
More of a lunch than dinner spot, but very cosy, overlooking the harbour and serving a mean smoked-eel sandwich.
Lange Veerstraat 1, Haarlem
023/531 3202
Daily 5.30–11pm
A affordable restaurant with a tasty range of traditional Dutch dishes. Mains €15–20.
Gedempte Nieuwesloot 54, Alkmaar
072/512 4422
Tues & Wed noon–10pm, Thurs–Sat 10am–1am, Sun noon–10pm
This popular restaurant serves excellent Dutch food with a French slant – mains for around €20.
Verdronkenoord 127, Alkmaar
Daily 11am–1am
Very friendly bar with music right in the centre of Alkmaar; next door there’s another, equally convivial bar, De Pilaren, which has regular live music.
Riviervischmarkt 13, Haarlem
Mon–Thurs 3pm–2am, Fri & Sat 2pm–4am, Sun 2pm–2am
Intimate brown café located in a former fish shop, with a wide selection of jenevers as well as many wines by the glass. Live music on Thursday and Sunday.
