Dutch House Hunting and Shrimpy
We’re heading to the Isle of Skye on Thursday for our 21st wedding anniversary, so if anyone needs me to pay a visit to a certain evil author and do the needful while I’m over there I’m at your service.
Things have been busy here for us in Amsterdam. We are full on house hunting (we have to move out of our fabulous crumbling gothic abode that we’ve lived in for the last 6 years because our landlord is selling it), and the house hunt is not going so great. Everything costs a billion euros and it’s still weird. Houses that literally cost 2 million euros still have a ladder leading to the bedrooms (we can not afford a 2 million euro house, btw).
Dutch stairs are a nightmare.
They are either a straight vertical six-floor climb with steps that are so narrow my size 7 foot won’t even fit on the step so you have to walk sideways, or else they are a spiral death trap, or, literally, a ladder. This limits our housing pool significantly because Dutch houses are tall and narrow with a billion stairs of the aforementioned variety and elevators are few and far between. We also don’t want to live in a house where the bedrooms are in the basement because the Netherlands is below sea level and basement apartments are nothing but trouble. Our choices are limited and time is running out. Still, we persevere. It’s pretty fun to go and see all these weird and quirky Dutch houses. I like to imagine what it’s like to live in them in great detail, even if they aren’t realistic. It’s great fodder for an active imagination like mine. Soon I’ll start to get stressed out and then everyone needs to say a little prayer for James because I’m going to be a nightmare to live with, and I’ll lose my mind and decide we have to move to Spain instead, but for now it’s fine. We’re taking it as it comes.
Here is James carrying Brian down a set of stairs in the first place we stayed when we got to Amsterdam and realized the Dutch stairs were going to be a serious problem.
We spent the last few weekends getting our little canal boat The Shrimp Whisker (Shrimpy) all ship shape for the season. We scrubbed her down, washed all her cushions, evicted the spiders and the cat, oiled her wood, touched up her paint, and had her motor serviced. We finally got to take her out on the canals on Sunday for the first time this season and it was glorious. She’s running like a dream and the weather was spectacular and we remembered all the reasons we fell in love with this sparkling city and remain firmly under her spell.
Next time I’ll show you the tulips, which are in full bloom. See you then! xoxo
Live on Shrimpy!!!
I feel you! When I had to move out of my splurging former Dutch Indies Apartment Hotel reconverted in luxury flats (with Art Deco finishes) as it became unaffordable, I ended up living in one of those typical Haagse post-war flats with external staircases leading to a common external corridor for all apartments. It was cheap (at that time I paid less than 900 euros for a one bedroom flat with double glazing and all appliance - and curtains and floor!). It was also 5 minutes commute from work so yay. I’d never been able to live in a typical Dutch house. I regularly had staircase related accidents whenever I visited friends in those kind of flats (rare in The Hague due to bombings).