It has been a while since I posted, but thought it would be fun to share what we have been up to on the weekends. We did a lot of day trips the first few weeks, but lately have stayed in Amsterdam as the city is reopening more from COVID.
Friday night:
Several of the last few weeks I have gone to pottery after work, but this week I met up with a potential new friend for dinner! She is also from Minnesota and is exactly my age so pretty small world! I took a bus to the west side of the city and we chatted for 2 hours over dinner and wine at an outdoor restaurant
Saturday:
We have slow Saturday mornings most weeks rolling out of bed after 10. One of my favorites is curling up in front of the windows with coffee looking at the canal views together.
Going on 3 weekends I have joining a group called wine walks where we go around the city and stop at various mom and pop shops and get take away drinks. It started from a Facebook group for Expat woman and now has become coed and Ryan joined this week too. It has been a great way to make friends in the city!
After the Wine Walk this week, we had not one party, but were invited to two different parties. Wow, two months in and look at what social butterflies we are! Ryan joined some coworkers to watch EuroVison and I met up with friends that I made from the last few wine walks. If you don’t know what Eurovision is, I highly recommend that you YouTube it as it is quite interesting. It is singing contest with one contestant from every country. It is less focused on the singing and more about the theatrical performance!
Sunday:
This Sunday we slept in after our late night and then met up with friends for brunch. We met them through Ryan’s work as they are also expat’s, but from Australia. We sat canal side as this cute restaurant right around the corner from our apartment that we have been wanting to try! The pictures are slightly deceiving as not pictured I had 3 jackets on and a thick scarf. It was about 55 with 25mph winds so it was pretty chilly, but worth it!
Late week on Sunday, instead of going to brunch, we hosted brunch. I am proud to say that we made enough friends that we had 10 people over for brunch of homemade crepes and coffee. People came and went so not everyone was over at the same time and we had all of the windows open trying to be at least a little COVID cautious, but so glad we don’t have to worry about that so much now being vaccinated.
This week, I went to the pottery studio for quite a while and worked on a few pieces. It is always a great way to spend an afternoon there and so relaxing. Pictures below is my first piece from my new studio out of the kiln! Drinking coffee out of a homemade mug is just so much better!
Not this week as it was raining in the evening, but frequently we take walks around the neighborhood. These are some of the pictures from last week’s Sunday night walk through the Jordaan neighborhood. It is always so fun to just walk around the canal area and so magical 🙂
I also included a lot of decorated bike pictures as I think they are so fun! You can find the bikes through the city and they are moved every week Ish.
And that has been our routine! It is fun getting out to explore new places and meet new friends on the weekends so no complaints here!
❤ Melanie
Smiles from Miles Away 