A Peek into our Home

This week, we decided it was high time to show you our apartment.  We're feeling moved in, the house is not a wreck with our belongings spilled all over it, and we've even got some of our own decorations up.  So this post will be mostly pictures—as always, you can click on any of them for a closer look.

The street we live on is a tiny alley, which you've already gotten a glimpse of in the Bike Tales of Doom post.  Here are some more shots:

Here is our street-level front door, with the "2G" you'll recognize if you've needed to mail us anything, and looking up and to the right you can see our kitchen windows, open on a nice warm day:

Our apartment occupies the second and third floors of the building (or "first and second", for our European readers), so after a flight of stairs and an inner door you reach our apartment proper.  First up, the living room, complete with some Monet, the Van Gogh museum brochure, and "Nederlands voor Buitenlanders" on the coffee table.

If you need to use it, the only toilet in our apartment is in a tiny room right by our entrance.  It's got just enough room for the essentials, and not much else.

In contrast, the living room (as you've seen) and the kitchen are quite open and airy, with lots of natural light.  We're really happy with the touches we've added, such as the hanging herbs and bulb baskets.  It's also lovely to have an oven (most apartments just have a combination microwave/oven)—and if we didn't have a fridge, where would we put the pictures of and from some of our favorite children?

Here are some closer looks at the artwork adorning our walls in the kitchen and living room:

I'm really impressed at how Clara could hang seven pictures from just two pre-existing picture nails!  And a couple of the postcards are from since we've been here—we're so excited to send some ourselves! (Let us know in the comments if you want one from Leiden.)

Our bedroom is up a narrow half-octagonal staircase:

We have nice views out of both sides of our upper level:

That latter view is the balcony off our guest room, which is where you could stay if you come visit between now and December:

We do not own the lion stuffed animals.

We also have a lovely bathroom at the top of the stairs, complete with laundry machines (but no toilet—that's downstairs in the tiny room):

Lastly, here are some cookies Clara has discovered!  They're called "speculaas" and are apparently very tasty:

Speculaas cookies go well with plates.

Thanks for reading!  What would you like to see more pictures of?  Us being happy? Cool places in Leiden?  Candid photographs of inflatable kayaks?  Let us know in the comments!