Ikea

We went to Ikea the other day to find a few bits and pieces. Such a great store although I can't say I like the floorplan which takes you on a trail around all of their products but I guess they've got to try to increase sales somehow.

Getting there turned out to be fairly straight-forward, if not well sign-posted. We were able to take the Metro from Nieuwmarkt straight to Bullewijk* station. We bought 2 x 1 hour tickets each for 5 euros so that covered us both for the return journey. We could've bought 2 x 24 hour tickets but that would've been 7 euro each and we weren't planning on travelling on the Metro again during the 24 hours. We exited Bullewijk station and turned right and walked until the first major intersection and then turned left and Ikea was already visible. The first entrance we found was through the carpark so I think the general idea is to drive there rather than take public transport.

* One amazing thing to note, after we got off the train it started to leave the station then suddenly slowed down and came to stop... just to let a mother and her child that had arrived late get on the train! I can't imagine that ever happening in London, once a train has started moving the drivers there wouldn't stop for anyone.

So we wandered around Ikea for a couple of hours finding the bits we needed wanted and then went to the warehouse to gather the pieces we'd noted down. Like the other Ikea stores I've been to this one also had a huge restaurant, but we didn't go in as it was packed and we wanted to get home. At the checkouts there was a 'Contant Betaling' option and one beginning with 'Alles...', we chose the latter since we saw a sign with all cards on it and I was able to pay with my new bank card... or with 'my pin' as people seem to say here. At home we looked it up and the Contant Betaling option meant you could pay with cash so that's good to know for future as you couldn't use cash on the other tills at all.

Getting everything home was pretty easy too, we only had to pay to have one item delivered and that cost 39 euro, fortunately they were able to deliver it later that same day. We managed to carry the rest of the stuff home via the Metro. Easy!

New Apartment

I've been in Amsterdam for three weeks and have just moved into our new apartment -- I'll go into more details of the process in a later post so that I can hopefully provide some useful tips.

Our apartment is in the Nieuwmarkt area which is a great location right in the heart of the city. Thankfully we're far enough away from the red-light district that we can avoid the masses of tourists. I'm very much looking forward to exploring the local area, especially once my girlfriend (with whom I shall be writing this blog) arrives in April.

The apartment is nicely furnished and the common areas are clean which is apparently quite unusual for Amsterdam. The living areas are very sunny and we have a lovely view of two canals out the front, and no buildings immediately behind us so we don't feel too cramped. The only downside I've noticed so far is that we don't have a proper oven! I'm not sure how I failed to notice this when I visited the apartment. I guess it's just one of those things that in New Zealand you never think to question... who *doesn't* have an oven!? Things aren't too bad though, we do have a special microwave oven which appears to have a grill so I believe that's the cut-down substitute. I shall look forward to experimenting with that tomorrow.