Haarlem

One of the little side trips we took from Amsterdam was to Haarlem.  It's a cute old town, and since I recently read The Hiding Place by Corrie ten Boom, I wanted to see if it looked like what I had pictured.  We had reservations for an early morning tour of the ten Boom house and store.  For the most part, it was what I had pictured from reading the book.    

The hiding place was SOooo tiny!  Hard to believe six adults would hide in there for such long periods of time.  Abby, Jake, Ella, Luke, and I were cramped when we went inside to check it out.  If you haven't read the book, under that last shelf is where people would crawl into the secret little space behind the wall.  There's a lever on the other side of the wall where you can lower a board down to make it look like the back of the cupboard.  They've opened up that front part of the wall now so people can get in and see the space a little easier.

Squishy in there!

 

You can still buy watches from the tiny watch shop here.  Super expensive.

The door in the alley.  Lots of people passed through here that needed help!

After seeing the ten Boom house, we walked over to the Grote Markt and saw the Grote Kerk.

More bikes (even bikes carried on bikes) and cute buildings...

I liked the colors on this wall!

You can't drive cars down a lot of the streets here.  Those rising bollard things will get ya!

Cute boy in front of one of Haarlem's canals...

 train station...

And, I think that about wraps up our little stop in Haarlem!