A place to call home

So, yes, it's been over a month with no word from the pancake! It's been super busy with moving in to our new place, seeing friends, buying bikes, checking out the crazy summer festivals (Pride!), exploring a new city, lots of bike rides, starting Dutch lessons, job interviews and other networking, and trying to get settled. I love finally having a home and not living out of suitcases any more!

Amsterdam's Pride Parade (on the canal's of course!)

We had to delay our move-in by a week because our container from California was still out at sea. So we got to stay in the cutest neighborhood in Amsterdam--the Amstelveld. The studio apartment overlooked the lovely small square and the whole thing has just a charming, quaint neighborhood feel. Very different from the Nieuwemarkt apartment we were in for the first month. It was awesome to get to know another neighborhood and the wonderful shopping/eating/drinking street, Utrechtsestraat.

Our Amstelveld front yard--only for a week!

Amstelveld's weekly Monday flower market

Flower market

Utrechtsestraat while the tram wasn't running, so lovely!

Fave bar: Bar Moustache

On August 15 we moved in to our new place on Van Ostadestraat in the very cool neighborhood, de Pijp. We have about 900 square-feet and 2 bedrooms and open floor-plan kitchen, living, dining room. Also our own washer/dryer (awesome!), and in traditional European style a separate toilet room and shower room. There's also a nice-sized balcony in the back that spans both bedrooms. It really has everything we wanted, plus an amazing location. The only downside is the view of the abandoned African church across the street; not ideal, but not terrible either.

Our front door

Kitchen/dining

Living, from kitchen

Small spare room, leads to balcony

Master, leads to balcony

The first major project we took on was repainting the place. On the day we signed the lease (1 week before move-in) we noticed that the walls were in pretty terrible condition and it's not normal here to repaint for tenants. We negotiated pretty well though, and the owners agreed to give us a good budget for paint and supplies. I found out quickly that paint is extremely expensive here $40-50/gallon for the basic stuff. So we first decided to wash the walls with warm water and soap to see how much dirt and grime would come off. Luckily that worked really well for the living, dining, kitchen, and master bedroom walls. All was left was the hallway (really bad shape) and the spare room. Those were hard work, but it's 200% better than it was before.

So the movers came on the 15th, and in about 2 hours we had a mess of an apartment. Boxes, boxes and more boxes. It was interesting watching the movers get the couch in the apartment, through the window! They made it work!

   

I promise more blogs more regularly now! More on the new house to come!