The Zoo, Vondelpark, & other fun stuff

We've had a really great week around here!  Last week, Andy and I had a little outing to the Nine Streets, a more boutique-like shopping area.  It's beautiful.  Here's sweet Andy on our walk:

We had a lot of fun on Saturday.  It was so fun to have Cam around to play with us!  In true Messick form, we went to the zoo.  It's right downtown, so we expected it to be small, but it was amazing! It was really big.  They had a lot of animals that we don't usually have in our American zoos.  And all the animals were closer with not as much blocking us from getting close to them.  Andy didn't seem to enjoy it as much as we'd hoped, but Cam and I still loved it.  Our favorites: the giant anteater, lemur land, all the crazy insects, the giant crocodiles, and the red pandas.  

Looking at the sea lions.

Giant anteater.  So weird. 

Proof I was there.

I can't handle how cute he is.

On our way back from the zoo, we stopped by the famous fry place on our street to try their frites and mayo.  (Fries and mayo.)  I was pretty sure it would be disgusting.  I'm not a huge fry person and don't like mayo.  But, I am a believer now! This place was incredible!

Later that afternoon, we headed to our local park, the Vondelpark.  It was beautiful.  The weather all weekend was incredible--like shorts and t-shirt incredible.  That is rare here! We (along with the rest of Amsterdam) decided to take advantage of the incredible weather by chilling at the park.  It was packed!  People everywhere sitting on blankets with picnics. We brought a ball for Andy, and he had a blast running around.  

Cam also bought his bike on Saturday.  It's a used bike.  (Clearly.)  Everyone rides bikes here, which is so cool.  He rides to work now, which is great.  We're going to get another bike for me soon.  This nice guy from our ward is letting us borrow one while we're here.  We'll put a seat on it for Andy.  It'll be nice for me to finally ride a bike here! Anyway, here's Cam riding his bike to work on Monday.

We loved our ward on Sunday.  We met a lot more great people! A really nice guy, Alan, invited us over for dinner that night.  He's American and even made us brownies! He lives right on the canal--it was beautiful.  We had so much fun getting to know him.

A couple days ago, Andy and I headed back to the Vondelpark.  I think we'll go walking there a few times a week.  They even have a little playground I found.  Andy loves all the dogs everywhere.  Isn't it beautiful?

 

Cam had a fun work get-together last night.  Cam is replacing a really sweet French girl, Amandine, while she goes on maternity leave.  Last night was her "going away" party.  She had some people over for drinks and appetizers.  It was fun for me to finally meet her and the other people Cam has been working with.  We definitely were the weird ones though! We already feel a little out of place at work gatherings, even in the US.  We're just not used to non-Mormon etiquette!  Like how everyone brings a gift to the host/hostess--we were clueless about that at the last party we went to in the summer.  Well this time, the usual discomfort was coupled with the fact that we don't drink, we don't understand the customs/etiquette here, and we're the only ones who have a child....and, let's just say, we felt a little awkward at times. :)  But it was still really fun to get together and meet people.  We get lonely! (Hint, hint: visitors welcome.)  

We're having a great time here, trying to fill in as much as we can.  This weekend: England! 

Oh, Laundry

Oh, laundry.  Just when I thought you couldn't be any less appealing.  Suddenly all of the settings are in Dutch.  (I've already ruined a few shirts because I washed them in super hot water accidentally.  Oops.) And each washing cycle takes 2+ hours.  Oh, and the dryer takes that long, too.  And each machine fits about a third of the capacity of an American machine. And then both machines are located in Andy's bedroom, which is tricky considering naps and all.  And then the washer is in a little dungeon, as I call it.  (No light, I have to stoop to get in there, makeshift door, etc.)  And then dryer does strange things like make our clothes smoke and require me to empty water after every cycle.  It will be a wonder if we ever have clean clothes here.  Considering my usual weekly four loads will now require 8+ loads, and each load will take 4+ hours (dismal math, I know), I think I can safely guarantee our laundry will ever be "done" here.

Just one of those quirks of living in Europe!  But, good heavens, I am grateful to have these machines.  Especially a dryer, which I only had once on my mission.  So maybe I'll stop complaining. :)

The dungeon that houses our washing machine.  I have to duck to get in there. 

Washing Machine

Our dryer is in a nice little room. 

Random Holland Thoughts

-The women here are gorgeous. They're blonde, tall, skinny, and stunning.  They all could be models. They all look like this: 

-People here are so tall.  You can tell the Netherlands has the tallest population the world.  Everyone towers over me.
-It's cheaper here than I thought it would be.  In fact, I may spend less on groceries here than I do in Texas.  Prices are definitely cheaper in Texas, but I only buy what we absolutely need here because I don't want to carry unnecessary things all the way up to our place.
-Cam got his bike today, finally!  A great used bike for 120 euro.  He's a true dutchman now.  We're all excited about this because it will be a much faster way for him to get to and from work.
-H&M is the best.  And there are three different stores within a five minute walk and one of them is exclusively kids clothes.  Amazing.
-Stroopwafels will be the death of me.  When I come home 50 lbs heavier, we will all know why.  And how is each one seriously 180 calories? Life isn't fair.

They don't look that great, but they are divine.

-Basically, the only American TV channels I get here are MTV and TLC, neither of which I watch a lot of at home.  So don't be surprised when I come home being well versed in Teen Mom 2, Say Yes to the Dress, and Cake Boss.  They do have BBC 1 and 2 here, which have some promising programs.  We'll see.  That's it for English speaking channels.  Of course, the plus is that they have way less commercials here.  Is it sad I care this much about TV?
-They have the best ice cream and gelato everywhere here. Pistachio is my favorite.
-The produce is awesome here.  So fresh! It's really affordable too.  5 tomatoes for 1 euro.  A big avocado for .80 euro.  A zucchini for .49 euro.  Red pepper for .60 euro.  Not too bad!
-Remember how I said Cam's work hours would be a strict 9-10 AM to 5 PM?  Sadly, that was a lie.  He does leave about 8:30 AM, but he's usually home between 6:30 and 7.  Ugh.
-I have an old school Nokia brick phone.  We just bought cheap prepaid phones to use while we're here, pretty much to just text and call each other.  I think it's almost identical to my first phone ever, which I got almost ten years ago.  Ha! No color, no camera, no internet. Very...basic.
-I'm finding cooking here to be tough.  I'm sure I'll get the hang of it as time goes on, but I'm having a hard time coming up with dinner ideas.  It seems like all of my usual recipes have at least one ingredient I can't find here.  And it doesn't help that everything at the store is in dutch.
-Have I ever shown how they moved our crates into our place here?  It was crazy! It's way too hard to move stuff in here through the way we enter our place, so they had to come early in the morning when the shopping street wasn't open yet and put our stuff on a little elevator, which they brought up to our living room window, which is five stories high. And this is a common practice here!

The movers at our living room window waiting for boxes on the elevator.

Some boxes on the little elevator on their way up.

-I hate the mosquitos so bad here.  I can't even stand it.  They bite us all night long. I think we each have 20+ bites.  Seriously.  We sleep in a mosquito net now, which is helping somewhat.
-I have to light our burners on the stove with a match.  Ugh.  I guess it's time to overcome my fear of lighting matches.
-I have a cleaner here.  Isn't that incredible?!  A cleaner comes weekly to work for 1.5 hours doing whatever I want them to do.  Amazing.
-Here's a great story about how I got locked out of our place for an hour the other day.  Some background: I love our downstairs neighbor, Kaas, but he's a bit on the paranoid side.  We really do live in a safe area and it's so difficult to get to our place, it feels a bit like a fortress.  You have to go through quite a few doors with locks.  Anyway, back to Kaas' paranoia--we share one door that leads to our place with him.  It has a normal lock, but he really wants us to do two deadbolts (TWO!) in addition to the normal lock on that door if neither of us is home.  This wouldn't be a big deal if I didn't already have a baby and a bag in my arms I was juggling.  But it's pretty tricky--especially since the keys are ancient keys that are really finicky.  So here's the story:  When I left our house Kaas was home, so I didn't have to deadbolt it.  When I came back, he'd left, so the deadbolts were in place.  I sat trying to open them for an HOUR until Kaas came back home.  I'd forgotten my phone too, so I couldn't call Cam to come save me.  I thought I was insane and didn't know how to use a key.  Turns out my deadbolt key was broken! We'd always used Cam's so I didn't know.
-One thing I love about our place is that, if you listen closely, you can hear the faint hustle and bustle of the shopping street below.  It makes me feel like my long-time dream of living in the middle of the city have come true.

Our Amsterdam Home, Part 1

We couldn't be more thrilled with our home here!  It looked nice in the pictures, but in person we were pleasantly surprised at how nice it really is.  The owners are apparently super classy people, and everything they have here is high end.  This is both wonderful and terrifying: wonderful because we're not used to such things, terrifying to imagine what Andy is going to break while we're here.  It is bigger than any place we've ever lived!  Who would have thought our biggest home thus far would be in europe?  And it has all the musts we're lucky to have in europe: dishwasher (!), washer, dryer.  The overall style of the place is beautiful; definitely old Amsterdam style mixed with some modern elements.  The top two floors are ours; a nice guy named Kaas stays on the bottom floor.  (I think Kaas will hate us very quickly, with all the banging on the floor Andy does.)

How did we find it?  Dell gave us 8 or so choices of places we could stay.  They varied quite a bit, especially by location.  Our priority was to be as close to downtown as possible.  And this place is definitely right downtown, which is why we picked it.  The back of the house sits against the main shopping street in Amsterdam.  (Hindsight: I don't think we realized how small Amsterdam is.  Really, I think about half of the housing options would have had the downtown feeling we were looking for. But, nevertheless, we're glad we ended up here.)  It came fully furnished.  We've stayed in a "fully furnished" apartment before that had nothing, so we've been pleasantly surprised how how fully furnished this really his.  They even provided brand new linens!  We did ship over a few crates of things: mostly clothes, toys, pictures, a year's supply of diapers (not kidding), toiletries, etc.  

Here are some pictures of the main floor: 

Kitchen:

I am obsessed with this table.  And how cool are these lights? 

Not pictured: the fireplace.  How amazing will that be in the winter?!

Kitchen Balcony: 

View from the balcony. We've never had a view from our kitchen before.  Cameron says he doesn't mind doing the dishes, now that he has a view.  He does seem to jump on dish duty quicker now, which I'm not complaining about. :)  Oh, and that's our picnic table to use down there. There's a barbecue, too. 

Cute little table and chairs on the balcony.

Half Bath:

We've never had a "guest" bathroom before.  We are excited about it!

Living Room:

View from the living room to the kitchen.

This is one of our favorite aspects of this place.  The backside of the house overlooks the main shopping street in Amsterdam.  This is our view from the family living room.  Our bedroom, which is right above the living room, has the same view. Yes, that is an H&M in the distance.  And impressively, that's not even the closest H&M to us.

I'll do a post sometime soon that shows the upstairs.  I also need to do a post that documents how we actually get to this place.  It is a journey! Also, a post dedicated to our laundry situation.  This place is great, but it definitely has a few "european quirks," as I call them.  :) 

Brugge

We just spent this weekend in beautiful Brugge.  We initially had planned on going to Paris, but then decided it might be better to do a "trial" vacation somewhere a little more low key, so we could figure out how to travel best with Andy.  We also wanted to test out doing a rental car instead of a train or plane.  Anyway, we had a blast!  It was the perfect first excursion for us.

We woke up early Saturday morning and took the tram to the rental car place.  It wasn't too far, but it was tricky with Andy's car seat and our luggage (though we only brought one piece). This was the first time we tried out our new fancy backpack, the Osprey Poco Plus, which we forked out a ton of money for and hoped it would be worth it.  We didn't even bring a stroller.  Anyway, we made it to the rental car place and drove off about an hour later.  (Apparently efficiency isn't a priority in european car rental facilities.)  Cam was worried about driving here, but settled in quickly and then became a pro.  The drive to Brugge was beautiful.  Lots of flat, green land with lots of cows, corn fields, and windmills (both old and new ones).  The drive was supposed to be about 3 hours, but with construction it ended up being more like 4.  

Brugge is stunning.  We both think it feels similar to Amsterdam, but older.  And it feels much smaller.  We finally got into the city about 3 or so.  We spent the day wandering around the city exploring.  Of course we bought some chocolate and tried some waffels, all delicious.  We took a boat cruise, which was beautiful.  Sadly, Andy wasn't exactly cooperative so neither of us enjoyed it too much.

Sunday morning we knocked out some of the tourist checkpoints after a great breakfast.  (Why can't croissants taste this good in the US?)  We went to the top of the Belfry tower.  So basically Cam carried Andy up 333 stairs on his back.  He's such a trooper; I was tired after and I didn't carry anything but myself.  For some reason, Andy loved it!  He couldn't stop laughing as we climbed the stairs. The view was incredible.  Afterward, we headed to the Picasso exhibit.  Does it make me sound uncultured if I say I didn't enjoy it that much?  It just didn't have any standout pieces that I loved.  After that, we headed to the Church of Our Lady to see the Madonna and Child by Michelangelo.  Beautiful!  We got more chocolate and waffles, and then headed out for the drive home about 1.  We thought about walking around longer, but decided with a kid, it's best to quit while you're ahead.  Sometimes less is more!  We drove home and ended up back at our place about 6.  

Andy's favorite parts?  

Like I said, he loved going up those stairs in the Belfry Tower!  He also loved the waffles and chocolates.  We took a little time every day where he could just run around in a park; he loved that!

What did we learn?  

Like I said, this trip was a bit of an experiment.  Driving was really cool in some ways, but I think we'll prefer the train or flying in the future.  The car ended up being super expensive once they added all the fees, fuel, insurance, GPS, etc.  And we hit mega construction/traffic both ways.

As far as stroller vs. backpack.  This one is tough.  That thing is heavy.  I don't know why I thought if we spent enough money on a backpack it would feel like you weren't carrying anything at all?  Ha.  Not exactly true when your child is a solid 25+ pounds.  Of course, I can't complain at all.  I carried him for 30 minutes and Cam carried him for 10 hours.  :)  We'd assumed a stroller would be tough because of cobblestone, tourist sites (like the tower and boat ride), etc.  But really, I think a stroller would have been fine 95% of the time.  We're not sure what we'll do in the future?  It seems like a stroller wouldn't really work in places like Paris (eiffel tower, notre dame, etc.).  We would just bring both, but it's hard to carry both around.  I guess we'll see!

As far as Andy goes--there's no doubt about it, travelling with a baby in europe is tricky.  I need to get in my head that travelling here this time around is just going to be different.  And that's okay.  One thing--we definitely have to plan his food in advance a little better.  Bring lots of stuff with us that's easy for him to eat.  Going out to eat is tricky.  We mostly have to get street food, which is a bummer because little restaurants in europe are my favorite.  I think I've had enough paninis to last me a lifetime. :)  Overall though, he did very well.  He was definitely extra tired on Sunday, but he was a good sport most of the time.  And we're thrilled that Andy loves his Kidco Peapod so much.  This way we don't always have to stay in hotels that have cribs.  

Overall, it was a great experience!  Sure, there are inconveniences with travelling with a baby, but how lucky are we to be able to drive 3 hours and be in Belgium?  We can't wait for our next weekend travel adventure!  

On the way to the car rental place in Amsterdam. 

Entering into the Brugge city center.  

Cam with his lunch.  Andy looking adorable. 

Cam and Andy in Market Square. Good view of the Belfry Tower.

Other side of Market Square.

Boat Cruise. 

Back of Church of Our Lady. 

Tower on Church of Our Lady.

View from our hotel.  Seriously gorgeous.

I told you Andy loved the climb up the tower!

View from the Belfry Tower.

During one of Andy's exploring times.

Madonna and Child by Michelangelo in Church of Our Lady. 

Inside Church of Our Lady.

One of our amazing wafels! 

Our car!  Our orange fire bolt.