May 17th at Haarlem

In the morning we visited the Frans Hals Museum. He was the favorite son of Haarlem, and especially in the last century has then considered one of the top 17th Century Dutch masters. The museum features large group portraits of the Civic guards, and there was enough explanation and context to make them interesting.

By early afternoon the weather had warmed up considerably so we took a bike ride over toward the beach on the North Sea. We rode a long loop on bicycle paths through the  Zuid Kemmerman National Park. The park is a large expanse of forest on top of dunes. At one spot the dunes had covered the  trail entirely , and the picture is Sandy bushwhacking. There are wild horses, which we saw, and many other wild animals including European bison, which we did not see. It was a very good ride of about 25 miles.

A good day.