Visited: the morning of 20 September 2026, a Sunday, on a shore excursion from MS Amadea in IJmuiden.
Haarlem is the natural half-day from a cruise call at IJmuiden, and the better choice if you have already seen Amsterdam. The town lies about 15 kilometres south of the port; by excursion coach we were there in around half an hour. The old centre is compact: a boat on the Spaarne, a walk to the Grote Markt and St Bavo’s, and an hour to yourself fit into a four- to five-hour stay ashore. If you can choose the day, avoid a Sunday.
Haarlem at a glance
- Where: North Holland, on the river Spaarne, about 20 km west of Amsterdam
- From IJmuiden: around 15 km — about 30 minutes by coach, roughly an hour by public bus with a change
- Time needed: three to four hours in town covers the boat, the old centre and a break
- Highlights: the Spaarne by boat with the Waag and the windmill De Adriaan, the Grote Markt, the Grote Kerk (St Bavo) and its Müller organ, Teylers Museum
- Good to know: the Grote Kerk does not open to visitors on Sundays, Teylers Museum closes on Mondays
How to get from IJmuiden to Haarlem
IJmuiden lies at the mouth of the North Sea Canal, where the sea locks lead ships inland towards Amsterdam. Cruise ships usually berth at the Felison Cruise Terminal; MS Amadea lay in the port close to the new sea lock. Most passengers on a call here are on their way to Amsterdam. We went the other way, by coach on the ship’s excursion, and were in Haarlem after about half an hour.
Without an excursion, the nearest public bus stop to the Felison Cruise Terminal is Badweg, a few minutes’ walk over the dike. If your ship lies elsewhere in the port, the walk to a bus stop can be longer — ask at the gangway where you are. Buses run towards Amsterdam Sloterdijk and towards Haarlem, but the line numbers in IJmuiden have changed more than once, and the trip to Haarlem usually involves a change. Allow about an hour. Look up the route on 9292.nl or Google Maps on the day, to “Haarlem, Station”; from the station the Grote Markt is a ten-minute walk. You can pay by tapping a contactless bank card when you board and again when you get off.
Taxis wait at the terminal on cruise days, and they are the fastest independent option. Whichever way you go, plan to be back at the ship 45 to 60 minutes before all-aboard.
Is Haarlem older than Amsterdam?
Yes. Haarlem received its city rights in 1245, around half a century before Amsterdam. It is often described as a smaller Amsterdam, but it is the older of the two. The Spaarne running through it is not a dug canal but a river, and the town grew up along its banks. The canal houses, the gables and the bicycles are the same as in Amsterdam. The crowds are not.
Haarlem from the water: the Waag, Teylers and De Adriaan
We began with a short boat tour on the Spaarne. It turned out to be the best part of the morning for photography: from the water you look up at the house fronts as they were meant to be seen, and the town lines up along the river one façade after another.
On the corner of the Damstraat stands the Waag, the weigh house, built at the end of the 1590s. Here the town weighed what the ships brought in, above all grain. The site was no accident: this is where a small stream carrying fresh water from the dunes met the Spaarne, and that water supplied the brewers. From the 15th into the 17th century Haarlem lived to a large extent on beer.
A little further along is Teylers Museum. It opened in 1784 and is the oldest museum in the Netherlands; by the museum’s own account it has been open to the public ever since. Its first room, the Oval Room, has hardly changed: display cabinets of minerals, and the instruments with which Martinus van Marum ran his experiments on electricity. If you have time for one interior in Haarlem besides the church, this is the one.
Upriver, the windmill De Adriaan stands directly on the bank of the Spaarne. From the boat it rises above the houses — the view that most visitors on foot never get.
The siege of Haarlem, 1572–73
In December 1572 a Spanish army stood outside the town walls. Haarlem held out for seven months. The townspeople — women among them — rebuilt the walls under fire as fast as the guns brought them down. One of them, Kenau Simonsdochter Hasselaer, a widow who ran a timber business, grew into a legend; later generations had her leading three hundred armed women into battle. How much of that happened is doubtful. The word survived anyway: in Dutch, a kenau is still a formidable woman who does not give way.
Starving, Haarlem surrendered in July 1573. The citizens bought the town free from plunder for 240,000 guilders. The garrison was not spared: apart from the German mercenaries, the defenders were executed.
The resistance became the example for the rest of the revolt. Alkmaar held out later the same year, Leiden the year after. Haarlem itself had lost.
Grote Markt, the Coster statue and St Bavo’s
The walk ends on the Grote Markt, with the town hall on one side and the Grote Kerk filling the other.
The man who did not invent printing
In the square stands a bronze figure holding up a letter A. It is Laurens Janszoon Coster, put up in 1856, and for centuries Haarlem claimed him as the inventor of printing with movable type, some years before Gutenberg. The evidence is thin; the first securely dated book printed in the Netherlands appeared in 1471, long after Mainz. The statue stands anyway.
The Grote Kerk and the Müller organ
The Grote Kerk, or St Bavo’s, is late Gothic, built mainly between the late 14th and early 16th centuries, with a tower of 78 metres. On Sundays it does not open to visitors. We got in by chance: a guided tour had been arranged for a private group that morning. Inside it is lighter than the outside suggests.
The organ at the west end was completed in 1738 by Christian Müller: almost 30 metres high, with around five thousand pipes. When it was finished it was one of the largest organs in the world. Handel travelled to Haarlem to play it, in 1740 and again in 1750. In 1766 a ten-year-old sat at the keyboard: Mozart.
Frans Hals
Frans Hals is buried in this church. He painted Haarlem’s civic guard companies with more life than anyone before him. Even in the 1630s, when his portraits were most in demand, he was taken to court by his butcher, his baker and his shoemaker for unpaid bills. From 1662 until his death in 1666 he lived on an allowance from the town. His paintings hang a short walk away, in the Frans Hals Museum.
Tulips, and why you will not see any in September
After the walk we had an hour of our own. Beyond the town, towards Leiden, lie the bulb fields that gave Haarlem its nickname, the flower town.
In the winter of 1636–37 tulip bulbs changed hands here at prices that would have bought a house — mostly as contracts for bulbs still in the ground. At the beginning of February 1637, at an auction in Haarlem, the seller found no buyer. He lowered the price. Still no buyer. Within days the market had gone. The tulip crash is often called the first speculative bubble in history, and it burst in this town. Historians today think far fewer people were ruined than the legend says; the story has outgrown the damage.
The fields flower from late March into May. On an autumn call they are bare, so do not plan a detour for them.
Photographing Haarlem: morning light and the view from the boat
We were in town in the morning. In late September the sun stays low for hours, and it drew long shadows across the squares and the brick fronts — hard, directional light that gives the gables their depth. By midday that is gone.
The strongest pictures came from the boat. At water level the houses along the Spaarne, the Waag and the windmill line up in a way you cannot see from the quay. If your time is short, take the boat before the walk, while the light is still low.
What I would do differently: not on a Sunday
I would not plan Haarlem on a Sunday. The Grote Kerk is closed to visitors, and that I got inside was pure luck. If your itinerary gives you a choice of days in the region, keep Haarlem for a weekday — though not a Monday if you want Teylers.
Is Haarlem worth it on a cruise call at IJmuiden?
Yes — especially if you have seen Amsterdam before, or if you would rather walk than queue. Amsterdam is further from the port and takes around an hour each way by public transport; Haarlem is closer, smaller and calmer, with the same canal architecture. What a half-day will not cover is all the interiors. Choose one: the Grote Kerk for the organ and Frans Hals’s grave, or Teylers Museum for the Oval Room. The Frans Hals Museum needs a visit of its own.
What does a half-day in Haarlem cost?
| Item | Price 2026 | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Public bus IJmuiden – Haarlem | around €5–7 each way | Contactless bank card on board; check the current line on 9292.nl |
| Grote Kerk (St Bavo) | €4 adults (last published rate) | Mon–Sat 10:00–17:00, closed to visitors on Sundays |
| Teylers Museum | about €17.50–18.50 adults, often less online | Tue–Sun 10:00–17:00, closed Mondays; Museumkaart and I amsterdam City Card accepted |
| Grote Markt, Coster statue, the Waag from outside | Free | — |
Opening hours and prices checked in September 2026 with Teylers Museum and the Grote Kerk; confirm before you go.
Tips for a half-day in Haarlem
Check the weekday before you plan. A Sunday call means the Grote Kerk is closed to visitors; a Monday call means Teylers is.
Start on the water, and start early. The boat gives you the Waag, Teylers and the windmill from the side they were built to face, in the low morning light, and the walk to the Grote Markt afterwards is short.
On Saturdays the Grote Markt fills with the weekly market — worth knowing if you want the square and the church front clear for photographs.
A town with nothing left to prove
Haarlem claimed the printing press and lost the claim. It held out for seven months and surrendered. Its greatest painter died on a pension from the town. And when Peter Stuyvesant named a settlement in New Netherland after it in 1658, the name became more famous there than here: Harlem.
Perhaps that is why it is such an easy place to spend a few hours. Haarlem has nothing left to prove.
Related: All cruise ports on your own · Netherlands travel articles · Rye from Dover · Stockholm on your own
Written by Jan Madeus — ship’s videographer at sea since 2008. I go ashore in the same ports as the passengers, with the same few hours and the same deadline. More about me.