I also like the checkerboard floor in the bathroom, and the fact that the place comes with its own washer and dryer (less for us to spend on!). It doesn’t have a bathtub though, which I initially thought was not such a big minus. Huwag maging choosy ang lumaki sa tabo at balde, lol. But I did a long, delectably hot soak in the serviced apartment bathtub the other day, and I must admit having one would be a wonderful luxury.

Still, I can’t complain. The his-and-hers sinks are a major step up from our tiny bathroom in Singapore.

The master bedroom is airy and spacious. The closet is a huge plus, since a lot of apartments here don’t come with built-in closet space.

The apartment has its own garden! How cool is that. It will be really lovely to eat here with guests when the weather is warmer. It’s a little odd, though, that the only access to the garden is through the master bedroom. Marlon and I are toying with the idea of switching spaces, i.e. using this room as the living/dining area and the front room as the master bedroom. But then that would mean that our bedroom faces the street.

A relatively spacious kitchen, with the very rare full-sized refrigerator (who needs a refrigerator when it’s already cold outside? is the Dutch logic) and enough space for our kopitiam table, Eames chairs and maybe some extra shelving.

Looking at it on the map, Beethovenstraat seems kind of far from the center of town (the canal belt up top), but it’s only about ten minutes by tram. The Museumplein where the Van Gogh Museum and Rijksmuseum are about three stops away. Yep, Amsterdam is that small.

For guests (that’s you!), there’s a direct train from Schiphol Airport to Station Zuid, which you can see is practically walkable from the apartment.

So root for us to get it! It’s a great apartment for you too!

“There’s no such thing as a perfect apartment,” warned my ex-boss, who lived and still owns property in Amsterdam. It might be in a great location, but tiny and with vertiginous staircases; spacious, but expensive; cheap, but with wooden beams poking out of odd places, or visitors having to enter directly into the kitchen instead of a proper entryway.

So far I’ve found this to be true. Working with two different housing agents (one assigned by the relocation agency, another that I found off the Net) and seeing 18 apartments over three days of viewing, I got a mixed bag of hits and misses. Marlon was only with me for the first day; I took over when he started work.

There were a couple of places boasting that Holy Grail of real estate, a classic Amsterdam canal view. One of the first apartments we saw was along the Singel, one of the famous canals in the city center. When the agent drove into this area, kinilig talaga kami ni Marlon.

It even had a fireplace!

It also had a pair of Roman pillars in the bedroom. Roman pillars! So, thanks but no thanks.

Another canal-side apartment was sunk into a basement. A priceless canal view can be yours, if you can see past the various-feet view and dog-poop-on-the-street view.

A corner apartment on the Prinsengracht had this view in front…

From centuries-old buildings, we headed off to the newer part of town. Newer in the sense that the buildings were built in the 1920s lang naman. Amsterdam hosted the Olympics in 1928 and built accommodations for the athletes, near the Olympic Stadium in the Zuid (pronounced Zoud, which means, you guessed it, South). This explains why the buildings all look alike. Still, a lot of them have little details characteristic of the era.

We even found one that we really liked.

We also saw one with a garden and a small studio, but figured maintaining the garden was too big of a commitment. Neither of us have had much luck with plants.

One of the apartments in the low end of our budget range had some very… distinctive, and, er, historical marks embossed into the old metal doors.

Dahil sa madugong kasaysayan ng lugar na ito, na-afraid ako sa mga bagay na hindi nakikita, na baka makita ko. Pero mas na-afraid ako sa hagdan.

But rather depressing, cell-like bedrooms.

Far east of the city, in a sort of industrial/dock area called Zeeburg, was a nice corner apartment with tons of light, and a sweet dining nook.

But, in the words of the housing agent: “Here we have a very different part of town.” And in the words of Ellen, my relocation agency yaya for the day, “This neighborhood is not so nice.” Hindi naman siya ghetto. But all the gray cement blocks just don’t say Amsterdam to me.

As Anna, our previous relocation consultant said about another apartment, “It could be anywhere. It could be in Denmark, for goodness’ sake.” (No offense to the Danes, of course.) The apartment she was referring to was an absolute no-no for Marlon. Paano ba naman, the master bedroom looks directly into the Philips tower, one of their two offices in the city.

Kamusta namang your colleagues can just look into your bedroom to see if you’re really at home when you call in sick? And thank goodness Europe doesn’t have much of an overtime culture, because Marlon would hate for his colleagues to know what goes on at night!