
The train leaves every half hour from platform 1 at the CS, and the round trip ticket cost of €5,80 is money well spent. I don’t know if you need to have lived or grown up by the sea to miss it, or if all humans just long for the ocean regardless of their past circumstances, but this summer (for it’s already summer!!!) you will want to make a trip to Zandvoort.

The last five minutes of the ride is nice, make sure you sit in the 2nd floor of the intercity train, ’cause from there you can see the nice landscape of sand dunes and vegetation as you close in on the Dutch coast. The train station itself is so small and cosy when coming directly from Amsterdam! And it probably is the only train station in the Netherlands that sells beach equipment. Loads of it.


Some ladies enjoying the beach from a distance or perhaps being just chilling in the ocean breeze.
I was surprised by how the beach space itself was dominated by restaurants, café’s and beach outlets. You could hire wind shields (it’s always windy) and sun beds, but of course you could also do like smart students do and go to the market at Waterlooplein first to pick up a vintage picnic blanket for €3. You can spread it out wherever there’s room for it, and given the season, you might want to arrive there before two o’clock to avoid any problems.

An arriving train from Amsterdam on a busy April Sunday
When I went there with my boyfriend we also wanted to have a look at Zandvoort itself, but we soon learned that one shouldn’t bother to spend much energy doing that. This town has a lot of restaurants and hotels, and despite it’s obvious purpose of attracting dozens of tourists, there is really nothing else of recreational interest here than the beach and the ocean. It’s ugly. Seemed like a horrible place to live.

So the trip was cut short (the ocean is still too freezing to swim in) and we jumped on the train back to Amsterdam. Spontaneously, to make the trip a bit longer and more interesting, we got off at the stop called Overveen, right before Haarlem.

Seemed like a rich part of Haarlem. Walked around for 15 minutes and had a drink at the nice café on the train station, then went on to Haarlem. Haarlem has a nice little park next to the train station, if you exit on the backside, not on the side that says “Centrum”. There were very few people there too, so I could actually ready for a while and my boyfriend even had a nap on the picnic blanket.
We were also surprised to discover that there’s another IKEA in the Amsterdam area apart from the one in Bullewijk. You can catch the stoptrein that rides between Haarlem and Amsterdam, it stops right next to IKEA at a stop called Haarlem Spaarnwoude.