Haarlem

The Gothic church over the Grote Markt holds Christian Muller's organ of 1738, the largest in the world when it was finished, with 32-foot pedal towers. Mozart played it at ten years old in 1766, as did Handel and Mendelssohn. There are free listening hours and organ concerts on summer Tuesdays.

The largest holding of Frans Hals in the world, including all five civic guard group portraits and the regents and regentesses he painted in his eighties, in the old men's almshouse of 1609 on Groot Heiligland. Tuesday to Sunday, 11am to 5pm.

The oldest museum in the Netherlands, opened in 1784 and barely altered since: fossils, minerals, electrostatic machines and drawings, lit through the skylights of the Oval Room. Tuesday to Sunday, 10am to 5pm.

Almshouse courtyards hidden behind plain street doors all over the old town, still lived in, most with a plaque and a request for quiet. Hofje van Bakenes is the oldest of them.

The square the church stands on: the old meat hall, the town hall, terraces down both long sides, and a Saturday market that takes over the whole of it.

Haarlem is the first main stop west of Amsterdam on the old line towards Rotterdam, roughly a quarter of an hour and several trains an hour. The station itself is an Art Nouveau building of 1908, worth a minute before you walk out of it.

The Grote Markt, both museums, the hofjes and the Spaarne all sit within a ten-minute radius of the station. There is no reason to buy a local transport ticket at all.

Zandvoort aan Zee is another ten minutes west on a branch that runs straight to the sand. On summer afternoons the trains are packed in both directions after four.

April to September, when the Spaarne terraces are open and the sea is twenty minutes down the line.

November to March: rooms are cheap, and Haarlem works as a much calmer base for Amsterdam than Amsterdam does.

Summer weekends and the tulip weeks, when Amsterdam's overflow books the town out.

Coffee on the Grote Markt, then into the Grote Kerk for the Muller organ. Go at a listening hour and you will actually hear it.

Walk to Teylers on the Spaarne. The Oval Room first, then the fossils and the electrostatic machines.

Lange Veerstraat or the Spaarne bank, both two minutes from everything else you are doing.

South to the Frans Hals Museum for the civic guards, then wander the hofjes on the way back in.

Beer at the Jopenkerk, a brewery and restaurant inside a deconsecrated church, then whatever is on at Patronaat.

Ten minutes west by train: a wide North Sea beach, a run of beach clubs from spring to autumn, and the Formula One circuit in the dunes behind.

Open eight weeks a year in the bulb fields south of Haarlem, 18 March to 9 May in 2027, with the gates opening at 8am. Tickets go on sale from mid-October. Arrive at opening or not at all.