Inside the apartment

A few shots in inside our "modern luxurious apartment":

(Jagger standing in front of the radiator).

(Jeff, Journey, and Justice folding up the roll away beds they brought in for us.)


(The bedroom)

(Another shot of the bedroom)


(I was very happy to see that they didn't attempt to destroy the old ceilings!)



("Modern kitchen". Jagger calls it a "mini-kitchen" and was thrilled with the small refrigerator and tiny dishwasher!)

Overall the apartment is nice and I'm sure we will have a fun time here. It's just that the first thing one thinks of when walking into the place is "IKEA", not "Old Amsterdam".

Apr '06 Apartment

As always, I will post some pictures of the apartment we are staying in. This apartment is in the Jordaan, a residential area of Amsterdam. It is an area that is less touristy, but still close to the heart of Amsterdam.



This is the street the apartment is on. It is a typical side street in the Jordaan quarter - narrow street, a few very small cafes and pubs interspersed with residential apartments. It is a very quiet area, especially at night (no loud drunk American college kids like near Dam Square!)



Justice is in the red coat, outside our apartment, with red doors.

I'm always intrigued by the unique layouts of the apartments here. The houses are extremely old, so many of the structures are historic landmarks and have regulations about what parts can be renovated.

This building was recently purchased by a man who has renovated the apartments to lease as furnished short-term rentals. We are his first tenants. When Jeff got here the place was freshly painted, so he had to open lots of doors and windows to air the place out before our arrival.



The living room is one very large room right now. The owner plans to move the living room furniture closer to the front doors and add dining room furniture to the area where the windows are to create a living room/dining room combo.



If you look closely at this picture, you can see the white railing off the living room and another one at the far back of the house. These lead to the downstairs bedrooms and bathrooms.



This view is from the other side of the living room. The bottom floor of the house used to be a storefront. The large front windows were used as display windows, while the shop keeper lived in the apartment portion of the 1st floor.





The kitchen is like a long hallway. It is stocked with all the necessities - dishes, utenstils, pots & pans, spices, tupperware, and appliances.



This is a typical European refrigerator - the size of some dorm fridges - holds enough stuff for 1-2 days (for a family of 5, that is!) On top of the fridge you can see an all-in-one oven. It is a typical oven, convection oven, and microwave!



This is the dining room. We take our food from the kitchen and eat it here (just a few short steps away). The owner plans to move the table and chairs to the living room area, as I stated before. He will add a large desk to this area to make it an office.

The windows you see in this picture and the others, lead to a small courtyard/patio area. The door to it is off of the kitchen.

This is a picture of the little courtyard. A neat place to eat dinner or get some fresh air!



This is the back staircase, off of the dining room. It leads down to "Journey's bedroom". He claimed this room as his when we first got here, but he has only slept in the bed once, the other two nights he has crashed on the couch! The stairs are very steep, but they are newer stairs, so they are easy to navigate.



This is Journey's bed. See Teddy Jr. tucked into the comfy bed? The bedroom are 1/2 below ground level, so when you look out the windows, you can look up to see the courtyard.



This is Journey's bathroom. The shower is brand new - more about that when we visit the other bathroom!

The really unique thing about this apartment is that it is like 2 apartments with a shared kitchen. Journey has his own little "bachelor's pad" here, but he has to come up the stairs to the dining room and across the house to the front to go down the other set of stairs to get to the other bedrooms! So even though the bedrooms are on the same level (1/2 underground), you can't get from one area to the other without going up one set of stairs and back down the other. I guess that's the price you pay to have a little courtyard in the center!



These stairs are off the living room, at the front of the house. The stairs were built in the late 1800's - hand crafted! They are a historic part of the house, so the owner was not allowed to do anything to them, other than paint them! They are very steep, uneven, and the surface of each stair is rather bumpy and rough. It took some practice, but I think we are finally used to them!




This is the bedroom that Justice and Jagger share. It has it's own door to the front street, with a unique entryway. You can see Jagger passed out on the bed, recovering from jet lag!



This is the master bedroom, which Jeff and I share.



The master bathroom has an extremely large bath tub with water jets! It also has a brand new luxury shower (matching the one in Journey's bathroom).



The shower has sliding circular glass doors and a mirror inside! It has a typical water faucet, a rain fountain that spouts water from the ceiling of the shower, and a water jet massage area with built in seat.



The shower controls are pretty high tech - you can pre-set the water temperature, choose which jets you want to spray water, and even turn on the steam to make a sauna!


This is one of the unique washer/dryer combo units. You put your clothes in, add some soap, and turn the dials to the appropriate settings. The unit while wash and spin your clothes and then turn to the dry cycle and dry them too! The downside is that it takes a looooog time to run - usually about 1 1/2 hours and then the clothes are still a little damp so you have to add some dry time. The unit is very small too - this morning we washed 2 towels, one pair of children's size 10 jeans, and a shirt. With a family of 5 laundry could take forever!

The Apartment

Here are some pictures of the apartment we stayed in. It is owned by the NH Grand Hotel Krasnapolosky. They own a 5-star hotel right in the center of Dam Square. They also own these apartments that are at the back of the hotel and around the corner. The apartments are just on the edge of the Red Light District, so there are a few DVD/video cabins across the street from the apartment, but nothing major. We like the apartments because we have access to all of the hotel services (concierge, cleaning service, room service, etc), but we have a full apartment all to ourselves.

This apartment was advertised as a 2 bedroom apartment, so we thought we would have the ground floor apartment that we had last Novemeber, but they gave us this one instead (for the same price!) This one was on the 3rd floor and had a big living room, dining room, kitchen, large hallway, master bedroom, 2nd living room area, 2nd bedroom, and a loft. It also had two water closets (extremely small bathroom with a toilet and small sink) and a big utility room with a gigantic bath-tub, 2 sinks, a shower, and the washer and dryer.






Jeff and Justice enjoyed playing video games on the laptop while watching BBC World news footage and documentaries.



Journey and Jagger were coloring some picures at the dining room table.



The master bedroom.



The long hallway with a small stair that I ALWAYS forgot was there!



Justice's bedroom with a staircase leading to the loft.







Journey really liked the loft bedroom, except for the scratchy carpet!

We're here!

We arrived in Amsterdam at 11:50am (local time) yesterday morning. Poor Jeff spent most of his birthday on an airplane. When we arrived we were all too exhausted to even celebrate. He has been craving sourdough bread, dutch cheese, and french wine, so Justice and I had planned to put some candles in a loaf of sourdough, but that didn't pan out. Anyone know the Dutch words for sourdough?

We survived the flights well. The kids were disappointed that Iceland Air doesn't have the seatback TV/game systems that Continental did, but they somehow managed without them ;) We thought the stroller was a goner for awhile there (glad I didn't bring your Quest, Jess!) We checked it at the gate at BWI and expected it when we arrived in Iceland. NOPE! Nowehere to be found. But the Reijkavic airport did have strollers for you to use - they were sitting all around next to the wheelchairs and you just grabbed whatever you needed. They had cheap umbrella strollers and a bunch of strollers that looked to be Emmaljunga (sp?) knock-offs - pramish buggies with big white rubber wheels. When we arrived in Amsterdam the Silver Cross Micro was sitting there waiting for us. I was quite relieved....okay enough stroller-speak!

The apartment is awesome! The living room, master bedroom, and 3rd floor bedroom have big picture windows that face the canal. It is especially beautiful at night when the lights reflect off the water. The kids love to look out the window and see the boats, ducks, and people. Jeff and I both love to watch the people - quite an interesting mix!

Yesterday and today were spent recovering from the jet lag. We did a little grocery shopping, but that was it. Tomorrow we plan to wander around the city and see what we find - each turn brings beautiful architecture, unique little shops, and interesting people!

Living room with a canal view

We will leave at the end of Feb and come back April 1. We were able to secure an apartment through the folks at Amsterdam Hotel Housing.. They have been very kind and helpful thus far, so we're hoping that everything continues to go smoothly. The apartment has 4 bedrooms and is on the 2nd and 3rd floors of a historic canal house overlooking the Singel Canal. It is in the center of Amsterdam so we will be close to everything.