Europe, My life and thoughts, Travel

Life in Amsterdam

As many of you will already know, I’ve always had a bit of a love affair with Amsterdam. And ever since my mum moved there two years ago, J & I visit so regularly that it’s slowly become like a second home to us.

We both know our way around like the back of our hand, we have our favourite neighbourhoods, shops, cafes, bars and restaurants (I’ll put together a guide of my favourite places in due course) but also explore new areas every time we walk the dog, and we’ve built quite a big network of friends out here too.

Lucky for us, we both work from home and so it doesn’t really matter where we’re based, as long as we have an internet connection. So for the past month we’ve been testing out life out here.

We’ve often toyed with the idea of moving here permanently, but there’s always been something holding us back – a new job, a new house, and other commitments. but this time it’s different as we’re finally in the position that we’ve got nothing holding us back – in other words, it’s now or never!

Our house is on the market, I can continue freelance writing from home, and Jonathan can continue to manage his business from home. We’ve even got a little apartment to stay in whilst we find our feet. Eventually I would want to find a more permanent job in Amsterdam (I’ve already had a few interviews, watch this space!), but until then I’m making the most of the freedom that freelancing gives you.

There’s so many things that I love about being here. We’ve met a lot of new people – many of which are expats working for awesome companies like Netflix, Uber, Facebook, Google or Booking.com for which they don’t even need to learn Dutch.

Amsterdam sometimes feels like a mini London, but less busy, less chaotic, and far prettier. The fact that any commute takes just 10 minutes on the bike (instead of 90 minutes on overcrammed tubes and busses) is a total game changer, as it means you can meet up with several people in the same day, and still get your work done on time!

As Amsterdam is quickly becoming a popular city, the houses are already at London prices, as are restaurants, but you still end up saving money as the commute is free. Oh, and wine is dirt cheap! Most bottles in the supermarket are around €2 or €3, and they’re perfectly decent, so entertaining friends is pretty cheap too.

Then there’s the canals for cruising in the evenings and weekends, there’s several beaches just a short drive away – all with really cool beach bars with fire pits, BBQs, hammocks and live music, and of course there’s the lakes too, where we spend the weekends if we have time.

It’s hard to believe that we’ve been here a month already – it’s flown by so quickly! Sadly we have a few commitments in England and abroad (Maldives, Austria, Tuscany and Mediterranean) over the next couple of months which means we won’t be able to spend much time here in Amsterdam, but we plan to come back again soon, and we hope that next time it will be for good.

So. Anyone know of any interesting jobs going in Amsterdam? 😉

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