Teylers Museum

Next stop, Teyler's Museum. Recommended by our hosts and one of the top attractions in Haarlem - and we can see why. A magical little gem. We gather this Teyler chap had a museum back in the day, and then left his collection to the city. So it's been preserved as an old school museum, while still making it accessible and enjoyable for visitors.

Relatively cheap, and audioguide included - which was necessary as most writing was only in Dutch. An eclectic collection of many different things, in buildings that are themselves interesting. First two rooms were fossils, then gemstones/rocks and old telescopes and other inventions, followed by paintings and some temporary exhibits.

Fossils were super interesting - what we were expecting from the Natural History Museum in London (which didn't really deliver). Also basically no crowds and you could get right up close. Fun fact - the amonite was a sea creature that lived in its spiral shell, made up of chambers. It adds chambers as it grows and lives in the biggest one. The other chambers are used to fill with air and water to make the amonite sink or float and move through the water. They grew up to the size of car wheels, but are now extinct - although their closest living relative, the nautilus, is half as small. The amonite was around for a relatively short period so they used to use its fossils as a way of dating different rocks!

They also had examples of some "lying stones". These were fossils that someone wrote a huge paper on until he later discovered they'd been fabricated by his rival to discredit him. Kind of funny - especially as the supposed fossils were convex on the rocks instead of being indented into them.

The room with rocks were cool - organised in an odd way, and surrounded by old school instruments and stuff.

Also enjoyed the paintings - some were really well done and just drew you in.

There was also a random film and an electricity exhibit, but mostly in Dutch so didn't stay as long. Apparently the Netherlands had a huge push to do everything with electricity when it first came out.

After the museum, strolled some more along the canals, before our final stop, the board game shop (of course).Read more