A short visit to my favourite place in The Netherlands: Teylers Museum

Hey there, stranger.

What have you been doing this week? 

Mine was pretty busy, but I'm trying to come with a plan to make this work. I hope I can keep it up because now that I'm kind of back, I wouldn't like to leave this again. 

I was lucky enough last Saturday to spend the day with my lovely friend Liv in Haarlem. We've been wanting to meet up for a while, and Destiny was kind to us, so we could arrange a date pretty soon. 

Haarlem is a city very close to Amsterdam, and I'm totally in love with it. It has my favourite museum in the entire Netherlands, a place that, maybe it's not too big, but is full of charm. I fell in love with it since the first time I was there, and believe me when I say that I have thousands of photos of this place and that this is not the first time I will be talking about it. 

But the day didn't start there but meeting Liv at Haarlem's station. A beautiful station, if I may say since is one of a kind! It was opened in 1839 and its architecture is quite unique in The Netherlands. 

Liv and I walked to By Lima, a lovely cafe close to the Grote Markt where we could have some lunch together. And what a lunch! Some french toasts and cake, plus a nice mint tea for Liv and a coffee for me. Everything was vegan and believe me, it didn't taste like it! Such a nice spot that we must try again.  

Vanilla-raspberry cake and mango-matcha cake, delicious!

After filling up our bellies, we walked around the city doing some vintage shopping. I was lucky to catch a nice black shirt in a very Larme Kei style for a very good price at Vintage Island. We also visited a little leather bags and jewellery vintage store and an antique place... But our great (and sad) discovery was a lovely store full of vinyl, second-hand books and kitsch stuff. Unfortunately, it was their last day open, which made us really sad. I found a little treasure in the shape of vinyl from Jarcha, with the single "Libertad sin ira", a huge hit during the 70s by the group Jarcha. I was surprised it was a Dutch edition from 1977! Very interesting. 

After saying good-bye, we walked out to the streets and visited one more vintage store, but a hard rain surprised us (well, it didn't surprise us, this is the NL, you know) so we walked to my favourite place in town: the Teylers Museum. 

Established in 1778, Teylers Museum is a place about science, art and natural history. You can find fossils, minerals, physics machines and beautiful paintings by different artists such as Anton Mauve, Jacob Maris,  Cornelis Springer or one of my favourites, Georgius Jacobus Johannes van Os.

At the Oval Room, a beautiful space designed for research and study nowadays you can admire in the showcases around some 18th-century scientific instruments, as a gorgeous mineralogical collection from the 18th century is displayed in the centre of the room. 

After the scientific spaces, you can find two amazing rooms full of wonderful art. Of course, I had to pose with the "Bloemstilleven met vogelnestje" (Still life with flowers and a bird’s nest) by Georgius Jacobus Johannes van Os. As you may have imagined, I was wearing this beautiful flowery skirt for such this occasion! The little cape around my neck was my granny's, and it was used back in the day for when you combed your hair, to save them in order to make a locket to your lover. 

It was time for me to say good-bye to my dear Liv, and thank her for such a lovely day (which I'm sure we'll repeat soon!).

Bye-bye Haarlem, until next time!

Cape - vintage

Cutsew - & Other Stories (second hand)

Skirt - Baby, the Stars Shine Bright (second hand)

Socks - Alice & the Pirates

Shoes - Monki