Je t'aime Paris!

We've taken our first official tourist trip since our move to Europe!  Last Wednesday evening we left right after work for a long weekend in Paris.  Needless to say, we LOVED it!  Our friends Brandon and Sarah McGillicuddy so graciously offered their apartment to us during our stay and we cannot thank them enough.  There was so much to do and see, and we got to see most of the sights we had in mind.

Thursday morning we woke up and got to The Louvre pretty early.  The line was not too long, so we really lucked out.  The Louvre is MASSIVE (it would take 4 months to see the entire museum!) and the first thing we  saw after we walked into the main area was the infamous Pyramid:

 
Once inside, we immediately went to see the Mona Lisa.  It was actually much smaller than we both had thought it would be.  It was surrounded by glass and everyone had to say about 10 feet away from it, but seeing it in real life was very surreal.

 

Another famous work of art that we saw here was Venus de Milo:

Here are a few of the other works of art we saw.  Keep in mind that we only saw a tiny portion of the museum, so this is just a snapshot of some of the works that are included in this amazing place.

 

After our 4 hour visit to the Louvre, we decided to check out Notre Dame Cathedral, of course!  We did not go inside, as the line was a bit long, but the sheer awe of being at the original Notre Dame Cathedral was truly incredible.  We learned that the whole thing took 2 CENTURIES to build.  It is truly a beautiful and amazing place:

Next, since it was an absolutely gorgeous day (and those are so few and far between for us, living in rainy Amsterdam!), we decided to go on a Seine River tour.  We were able to learn a lot about the city (we have more photos from this but have not yet uploaded them), and got our first glimpse of the Eiffel Tower.  After the river cruise, we decided to get dinner at the Notre Dame Cafe (across the street from the Cathedral) and then walked to the Eiffel Tower.  (This was just over a 3-mile walk - one way.)  We knew we had to take advantage of the beautiful night to see the Eiffel Tower in person and then to watch it light up.  We had seen pictures, but nothing does it justice like seeing the enormous structure in person.  It was truly breathtaking!  After sunset the tower lights up and then at 10:00 pm, the Eiffel Tower sparkles!

After the tower sparkled, we walked back home and fell asleep almost as soon as we laid down!

The next day we grabbed breakfast on-the-go and ate it in a beautiful and expansive park that runs all the way from the Louvre to the Obelisque.  It was very picturesque and a great way to begin our day:

After enjoying our breakfast and the scenery, we went to the Musee d'Orsay.  We cannot put up any photos, as the museum did not allow any pictures to be taken.  It was a very cool museum with famous paintings from many impressionist painters such as Monet, Manet, Matisse, Degas, VanGogh, Renior and many more.  There were other works of art there as well, but we spent most of our time looking at the impressionist art.

After the museum, we had lunch at nice cafe across the street and walked down to see some of the souvenir shops right at the Eiffel Tower.  We also enjoyed browsing the trinkets, photos and memorabilia at the street vendors on the street that runs along the Seine towards the Eiffel.

On our last full day in Paris, we met up with Brandon and Sarah and toured the Catacombs.  This is basically an underground tunnel-turned-graveyard.  Many bones were moved from cemeteries after some of them became health hazards.  Moving all the bones took 80 years.  This was truly an amazing thing to see, knowing that all the remains we saw had a story behind them that we will never know.  It was a  bit eerie, but also very interesting.

After the catacombs, the four of us had lunch and while Sarah waited for our table to come available, Brandon took us around the corner to see St. Sulpice, a MASSIVE Catholic church.  We were allowed to take photos inside the church.  For those of you from Grand Rapids and Catholic Central - it makes St. Andrews look tiny:

When our bellies were full, we went to Montmarte, a beautiful area with a Catholic Church even larger than St. Sulpice.  Montmarte is the area in Paris where most of the famous artists from the past would gather, and seeing the views, it's not hard to understand why.  From the top of the hill, you have one of the most breathtaking views of the city.

Once we had seen Montmarte, we decided to head back home to grab some dinner.  Later in the evening we met up with Brandon and Sarah to grab a few drinks and to say goodbye.

Sadly, our train left on Sunday morning.  We had such a great time in Paris and would definitely recommend it to everyone.  It's a great place to go if you ever have the opportunity.  The city is so beautiful and so rich with history that it should be on everyone's bucket list!

In just 2 days, Abby's sister Molly and her boyfriend Nick will be here and we are so excited to have family from home here for a visit!  

Stay tuned for updates, we will try to keep them coming more often!  We love all of your comments and are so glad we can share our experiences with you all.  Thanks for the prayers!

Rain, rain go away!

Greetings all!  We are trying to make a better effort to more regularly update the blog for everyone, so hopefully this is good!

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the weather climate of Amsterdam, here is a little tip for you: BRING AN UMBRELLA WITH YOU EVERYWHERE YOU GO!  The weather here on a typical day (at least for the past few weeks) is pretty overcast and there is usually, at the very least, a 50% chance of it raining each day.  We have learned to always pack our umbrellas because you  never know when it's going to start downpouring!

You may be asking yourselves, "Why are they telling us this?"  Well folks, it is more of a transition to the next story.  Last weekend, it actually wasn't raining and we were quite surprised.  We figured we had to capitalize on the beautiful day and do some tourist-y things since we hadn't really done any sightseeing since we've been here.  We decided that it was a perfect day for a canal cruise.  It was a very cool experience and we were able to see a lot of the city that we haven't really had the opportunity to see, as well as get a bit of a history lesson at the same time.  We put most of the photos up on facebook, but if any of you would like to see them, just comment and we can put them up here as well.

In the mean time, we have 2 very special pictures to share; one for Abby's brother Neil and one for Dan's dad.  We think you'll be able to discern which picture is meant for which person.  We see both of these on a daily basis at a tram stop near the apartment:

This is actually life-sized and is just standing there in someone's apartment!  (They also have a huge Lisa Simpson on their balcony.)

We aren't sure if this is typical attorney attire in the Netherlands, but thought it was pretty cool!

On a different note, we have booked our tickets for our weekend trip to Paris.  We are so excited to go and will have our own personal tour guides, our friends Brandon and Sarah McGillicuddy!  We will be leaving after work on the 2nd of May and will return to Amsterdam that Sunday.  Rest assured we will post photos of that trip!

Well folks, that's all for now.  We love the comments, so keep 'em coming!  Thanks for all your prayers and support - they have been so encouraging!  We love you all and for those back home, we will see you in June!

It's been a while!

Well folks, it certainly has been a while since our last blog post - sincere apologies for that!  We've been in a bit of a transitional stage as far as moving and our wireless went out.  Luckily today we were able to put our minds together to figure out how to re-set it...phew!!

Since it's been so long since our last post, this will be more of a list/synopsis of what has happened since then!

-We have moved!  We used to live quite a bit south from town.  It had a really nice view of the sunset every night, which was awesome.  However, it was a studio hotel apartment and not a place anyone would really want to live out of for 2 years.  We now have a nice place much closer to the city center and much more convenient over all.  The commute  to work is much shorter and one side of the apartment overlooks a canal.  Here are few pictures:

 

- Last week we had the "Freaky Friday," which was a lot of fun.  The last week of every month, the company rents out 2 bars right across the street from each other for 3 hours.  They are open only to Booking employees during that time and it's just a really great chance to socialize with everyone!  We've both started to make some really great friends.  We've discussed with each other numerous times that one of the things we like best about living here is the culture of the company.  So many of the employees are not native to Amsterdam and much like us, don't have a lot (or none) of their family members here, so the company has a very family-like atmosphere and energy.  It's been a great comfort talking with colleagues who have left their "homeland" as well and that has made the transition for us very smooth.  

- Many people from home have asked us how the weather is here.  Don't let the above picture fool you...it's not that sunny most of the time!  About 1 week ago the weather was quite nice and sunny.  Still a bit chilly, but at least there was sun!  The past week or so however, it's been a bit dreary and rainy, which is very typical Amsterdam weather from what we have heard.  We make sure to bring our umbrellas with us every time we leave the apartment!

-We haven't really gone sightseeing much, but hopefully we will get some of that done in the coming weeks, now that we are getting more settled.  In the meantime, here are some pictures of the city, as we have had many people ask for them:

Rembrandt Square:  This is a great area for people to get together.  Abby's work is right around the corner and the Freaky Friday is in this square as well.

Just down from Rembrandt Square is the clock tower:

Here is a collection of pictures that we took of the city, just walking around:

And of course, we must put up pictures of Centraal Station:

Even though some of you may not believe it, Abby is getting much better at navigating her way around the city.  (It is still a work in progress though!)

Well, that is all for now.  Since we have our wireless up and running, we promise that it will not be as long between updates any more!

We love you and thank you all for your prayers and encouragement!

A funny thing happened...

Well, we have officially been here for 2 weeks today and are doing much better and finding our way around the city.  We've both now got a full week of work under our belts and are starting to get into a more "normal" routine.

We've discovered that St. Patty's Day isn't quite the huge deal in Amsterdam as it is back in the States.  There were of course, many people dressed up and celebrating the day, but nothing like the magnitude of celebration back home, where EVERYONE wears green regardless of heritage.  We did go out for a few drinks and something to eat with Jen Lyons and her boyfriend Jim (Dan's colleague from Grand Rapids), and that was nice to be able to have visitors from home!

We had quite the experience yesterday with our chipcards for the metro and tram.  Before we met up with Jen and Jim, we went to Centraal Station to reload our chipcards, just as we did the weekend before.  It was a fairly nice day out, so we decided to walk to Rembrandt Square where we were meeting Jen and Jim.  It was not until we were leaving to get on the tram to return home that we discovered that for some reason or another, our cards were not working.  We could not figure out why or how this happened, as we both had just reloaded them with a sufficient amount of money.  We asked someone at the metro station where we go to head home, and they suggested we go back to Centraal Station and find out what happened.  Off we headed and then had to re-explain everything.  One of the GVB officers didn't believe Abby but let her through the gates anyways, making sure to tell her to buy a ticket.  We finally found out that we needed to go to the GVB Information office across the street and as luck would have it, they close early on the weekends and we missed the time by just about 1 hour.  Finally we just decided to buy 24-hour chipcards and we are going into the GVB Information office this afternoon to find out what happened.

Just when we thought the evening could not get any more strange, we were on the metro heading back home when a woman we assumed was a GVB officer came and started scanning tickets.  Luckily our 24-hour ones were read, so that was no issue.  There was a man that was with her but kind of stayed off to the side - it is very hard to explain.  We were both very confused as to what was going on, as both of these people were in plain clothes and then both simply started talking with random people on the metro.  A few stops later, both of them got off and that was that.  We both just looked at each other and said, "Did that really just happen??"  It was the strangest thing.  We made up stories about what could possibly have been going on, such as they were undercover police or running a scam or something like that, so that was definitely amusing!

We hope all is well back home and that everyone is healthy and happy!  We are looking at coming home from June 9th until probably the 23rd for Abby's cousin Jill's wedding and are definitely looking forward to seeing a lot of family and friends while home.

As usual, thanks to everyone for your support!

Starting to get settled in...

Well, we have been here for a few days now and are feeling more familiar with the area (one of us is better at navigating than the other...but I'm sure you all know which of us that is!).  On Monday we met with our HR department to sign a few papers and then headed over to the immigration lawyer's office to sign even more papers for IND (this is where we had to go to complete our VISA paperwork).  Later that afternoon we had another appointment set up at the actual IND office, which was about an hour's train ride away, towards The Hague.  Needless to say, we were quite exhausted by the end of the day!


On Tuesday we ventured into the city again to walk around a bit.  We found a fantastic burger place called the Burger Bar and it was DELICIOUS!  We were able to figure out what routes on the Metro and Tram we needed to take to get to work and then finally went back to our temporary lodging.


We both started work on Wednesday and it went well!  We are in different offices, so we never see each other during the day at work like we did on breaks and lunch back home.  Naturally, we both had issues with getting our rights/computer profiles transferred, but hopefully by tomorrow we will both have our work emails working.  


Jen Lyons from Dan's team back home will be here this coming Monday for training and we just found out today that Jen Warner from Abby's team back home will be here at the beginning of next month for training and are VERY excited to have some friends from home come to visit!  When Jen Warner comes, we may be planning a weekend trip to Paris, which will be a lot of fun.


That's all for now.  Thanks again to all for your support, prayers and encouragement; we really appreciate it!

We made it!

After a long flight (those airplane seats sure aren't made for sleeping in!), we arrived at Schipol Amsterdam airport about 30 minutes before our scheduled arrival time this morning.  We got to our temporary housing without any problems and then took a quick catnap.  We didn't want to sleep too much or else we wouldn't be able to fall asleep tonight and with the time difference, we definitely want to get on a normal sleeping schedule as soon as possible.  


Once we felt a little more refreshed, we decided to try the tram/metro and found our way into the Amsterdam City Center where we walked around quite a bit trying to familiarize ourselves with the tram schedule and the layout of the city.  We also wanted to find the Booking.com office that we will be going to tomorrow to do some more paperwork.  We were able to accomplish this so we should have no problems getting there tomorrow morning on time.  


To sum up, we are VERY tired from the trip but thankful that we made it safely and are starting to get a bit more familiar with the area.


Thanks to everyone for all of your prayers and well-wishes!  We love you!

Well folks, this is it - our last few hours in the States!  The past few days have been full of packing up our lives here and making sure we remembered everything we need.  It's been a bit stressful but we did it!  We are meeting up with both of our families at the airport in just over an hour to say our final farewells.  This moment has seemed so far away for so long, and now that it's here, it's a bit surreal. 

We want to thank everyone for your support and encouragement.  We have tried to see and talk to everyone we could over the past few days.  We know there are some friends and family that we didn't get the chance to see or talk to, and we are very sorry for that.  We will be back home in Michigan for about 2 weeks in the middle of June, so hopefully we can catch up with many of you that we didn't get to see before we left!  Again,thanks for the amazing show of love, support, encouragement and prayers that you all have sent our way. 

We look forward to sharing our journeys and travels with you!