At Home in Amsterdam

rijksmuseum

Four months in Amsterdam have flown by. I’m not sure where to start with telling you about it, so I suppose I’ll just start with this moment, right now. I’m sitting on my balcony, enjoying a long summer evening. It’s after eight at night, but the sun hasn’t yet set, and it won’t start getting dark for another couple of hours.

We live in an apartment in the south of Amsterdam (just one train stop away from Schiphol International Airport, in fact, ideally located if you’d like to pop in and visit–please do). Many summer days have been like this, bright and blue and sunny, but with a touch of a breeze in the evening. Other summer days are bleak and rainy; but it’s hard to remember those exist on a day like this. We even had one entire week of actual hot summer, culminating in an agreeably sweltering Fourth of July; our apartment doesn’t have air conditioning (I think most don’t), so we broke down and bought fans, but we haven’t even used those much since.

So much for the weather, the extreme unreliability of which is always a reliable topic of conversation here. Now that I’ve broken the ice and managed to sit down and blog, I’ll no doubt be able to tell you in future posts about our children’s first experience in a (Dutch) public school, how much I adore the fact that we sold our car before we left the United States, and I haven’t missed it once, the way the canals look at twilight with the sky slowly going from indigo to black, reflected in the water, and why, more than anywhere else we’ve ever moved, this place really feels like home.

Among other important accomplishments during our time in Amsterdam so far, we’ve done the following:

Acquired yearly museum passes and visited the Van Gogh Museum and the Rijksmuseum

van gogh

Bought new hats at the flea market

hats

 

Visited IKEA not once, not twice, but three times

IKEA

Eaten ice cream. Yes, more ice cream. No matter the temperature.

ice cream

Taken too many bicycle selfies to count. Yes, I do have my own bicycle too. I only ride on the back of Tony’s on special occasions.

bicycle selfie

So far, Amsterdam is treating us very well. We’re thinking we should stay here for a while. Like, forever.

4 thoughts on “At Home in Amsterdam

  • August 3, 2015 at 2:13 am
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    I’ve been popping by your blog every few months in hopes of seeing an update. So happy to see you settled in Amsterdam! We spent several days there a few years ago (with a 3-year-old and me 7 months pregnant). It was an enchanting city, and I could see falling in love enough to stay.

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  • July 26, 2015 at 7:54 pm
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    Ah, this makes me yearn for our Danish adventure next summer. We will pop down for a bit and see you when we are there!

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