Huge apologies for not posting for a while…moving house to a new country has been a rather busy and time consuming experience.
We are now so happy and enjoying every minute of our our new life in the Netherlands!
To give you a bit of background on our move…..a couple of months ago, just at the end of Summer, Simon got an amazing job offer with a company based in Amsterdam.
We always thought of Amsterdam as a great city to raise children and a creative place to work, so when the opportunity came we jumped at the chance to try a new adventure!
After nearly 5 years in France we were happy to try a new experience even though we could have happily settled in Paris as we really love it there.
The past few weeks prior to moving here have been very intense. First of we had to find a school for the children. We were very lucky to find a place for both of them in the French school so that they can continue in both French and English - also making a transition back to France easier in the longterm.
Finding a home was pretty easy. We just love the architecture here and we were so excited to live again in the city centre (our previous home was located in a quiet suburb in the outskirts of Paris). We've found our home in an area just to the South West of Amsterdam called Willemspark. It's an absolutely lovely and cosy two level Dutch apartment with a little garden on a quiet leafy street. We have everything we could hope in less than a minute walk from our home: cafés, food shops, flower shop, fishmonger, bank, trams and a beautiful children's toy boutique called Imagine. We even have the Vondelpark 5mn away from home and Le Pain Quotidien for weekend breakfasts. It's a fabulous new city lifestyle.
Finding the right bike (of course our main mode of transport now!) was actually rather more difficult. Simon (THE bike specialist) spent days visiting bike shops in Amsterdam, checking blogs and doing research on the best family bike to have in Amsterdam. On this we can really recommend the blog and bikes from Workcycle. They give the best advice on all types of bikes to have in Amsterdam. After almost endless discussions, we finally decided that the best option for us was to get one of the famous Bakfiets to be able to take the children on school runs and around town and keep them dry under cover during rainy and cold autumn/winter months.
I'm really looking forward to the next week. The children will start school again, which means I can start looking for a studio to rent and start working and blogging properly again.
I am looking for a shared studio to rent in the De Pijp area so if you have any suggestion I would really appreciate help!
Famille Summerbelle will still be run from our studio in London and soon from Amsterdam! I am so happy about this new move!
There will be plenty more on Amsterdam over the coming weeks and months as we settle into our new life….
