Our house in Amsterdam

Amsterdam is a beautiful city which is steeped in history. Every building seems to be ornately decorated, therefore making it very interesting to look at! The museums in particular are really impressive buildings. They are so grand and impressive looking that they draw you inside for a better look. The museum pictured below is the Rijksmuseum which is not terribly far from our house. Princess is very excited about the prospect of so many exciting museums to explore. You can purchase a museum card which allows you to visit the various museums around Amsterdam as many times as you like. We will definitely be getting those.



As we have mentioned before, there are lots of bikes here. Today we saw someone who took security seriously:



Look at the thick cable used here! and how ridiculously long the cable is.



The lock is the weakest link in that case! It pays to be incredibly security conscious when it comes to your bike as apparently theft of bikes in Amsterdam is really common. This is why people tend to buy crappy looking bikes instead of incredibly flash ones. The more nondescript the better your chances are of it not getting stolen!



This is our street, with the usual litter of bicycles. The houses here were apparently built on sand, and over time the ground has sunk, leaving some of them (including ours) on a bit of a lean. We are up on the right there, see it? Our entrance looks just like all the others, and walking into the house we have three staircases, all dangerous and steep!



Yes, those banisters are vertical for most of it, and the stairs are about 5cm wide unless you swing out wide. It's quite scary carrying stuff up and down them as there is not a lot of room for error! Such stairs seem to be the norm in The Netherlands. Other Dutch houses we've visited have them too.



We have a locked door on the 3rd floor, and share a building with about 4 other flats. There is a lady in our building who comes from Whangarei in New Zealand! Chur.

Now we'll show you around our little house. As you walk in, on your right is the kitchen. It's a good size, with lots of bench space. As the house came fully furnished we didn't have to worry about buying pots and pans etc - they were already provided.


The kitchen is slightly risen up from the rest of the room. From here you can look out over the action in the rest of the room and also out the window.




The dining table/office is in front of the kitchen, along with the lounge, in an open plan room. We've got a nice black leather sofa which is real comfy and a couple of other chairs.



This is where the getting a job business has been operating the last week. Both of us have been scouring the 'net for jobs. On the left side of the flat is both the bathroom and the bedroom.



As you can see, the obligitory NZ Tui calendar is hung up. We have a bath and a nicely finished bathroom. Odd considering the rest of the house is so tatty.
Princess is really enjoying having a bath again, especially in this freezing cold weather!



The bathroom also has these glass tiles which look directly into the bedroom. They're a nice way to get some natural light into the bathroom, seeing as it doesn't have a window, but you can see straight through them! So, if you are coming to stay with us be warned - your nakedness might be revealed to whoever is in the bedroom at the time...



The bathroom glass tiles are to the left of this picture. Our bed gets real sunlight, and passes it into the bathroom too. The bedroom is really small, but as you can see there are some drawers for clothing, and there are also some shelves for toiletries etc. There is a reading light for Princess which is very useful!



This is the bedroom door, with the lovely large window we have in addition to a skylight in the roof over the dining table. Because of these the house is always light and airy.



The window looks over our street, very nice view. The houses look like they are made out of gingerbread don't they? The street we are living on is reasonably upmarket, so Tim is always drooling over the flash cars that are parked along the road.


And, like every building in Amsterdam, we have a hook to lift stuff in the top window. Its a good thing, because moving anything heavier then our backpacks up those stairs would be hard and dangerous. The house has lots of quirks, as it is not square in lots of respects.



Look a the top of that door! our floor has a definite lean to it, and they seem to have just cut everything to fit when the house sank or something!



Weird! The floor is also on a lean, and Toolman has demonstrated to Princess how a ball can roll from one corner of the room to another on its own.

Toolman did a video tour and posted it on youtube. it is embedded below, so you could watch it if you have broadband by clicking below:

Both of us are really enjoying being in a house again. It's so nice to be able to unpack our things, and to be able to prepare and cook our own food. After months of not particularly clean rooms it's nice to be able to keep things clean the way we like it. We're not sure how long we will stay in this apartment, but it's a good start for now.



End