A Home and the Queen

House hunting mission complete! We have found the place that will be our home during our time here, at least a large part of it. We found a 2 bedroom apartment in Scheveningen on the coast (it is still a part of Den Haag). We will be right near Oude Scheveningen which has tons of cute cafes, pubs, stores etc within walking or biking distance! We are also walking distance from the beach (5 min away), and even though it will be winter it will still be really nice. The place also has a great patio out the back which is wonderful! We move in Oct 16 and have the place until around mid/end March depending on what we decide. So if your thinking of coming to visit, let us know because we have a spare bedroom:) We will post some pictures of our new home once we move in!

In the meantime we are still at my cousins for the rest of this week, but will heading to South Holland for a family BBQ at my cousins cabin and then will be staying there for awhile after the weekend and so we are hoping to explore that area a bit more and maybe head into Belgium as well.

On another note, we got to see the Dutch Queen today! It was State of the Union day today in Den Haag and the Queen and her children travelled by golden carriage from her working Palace to the Parliament buildings. It was hard to see, as we showed up a bit late and so we have quite a few people in front of us..but we still saw her.

Here are some pictures of our encounter with the Queen and the centre of Den Haag

 Queen Beatrice and Prince William Alexander (and a waving dutch hand)

 Parliament Buildings

 The Queen again..

 Some of her entourage 

 The working palace of the Queen

 Parliament

 Joel and his pal William of Orange

The Justice Building

Delft

We went on a little biking trip to Delft on Friday (all of 5km away from where we are staying). Delft is a smaller and older town, that is very well known for their Delft Blauwe pottery. The pottery we have all seen at one point at our grandparents that is white and blue and depicts various Dutch scenes. The factory itself is located outside of Delft and so we did not actually see it, but there was Delft Blauwe everywhere!

Delft is a super cute town, full of old buildings, churches, bridges, canals, cafes and like most of holland tons of bicycles! We loved it there, it has a lot of charm. We hung out in a few cafes, ate some yummy bakery goods by the canal and just wandered the streets checking out all the cool buildings. There was also a carnival going on in the main square which was entertaining to walk through as well.

We are thinking since it is so close we will probably bike there tomorrow as well. Biking here is so, so, so easy and wonderful! We have a lot we can learn from the Dutch biking system, there are separate paths that take you everywhere you need to go and when you are not on those, there are bike lanes that have their own bike crossing at intersections. All the lanes and paths are red for the most part so it is very easy to see where bikes are supposed to go. It is all pretty ingenious! right now we are borrowing bikes from my cousins, but once we get settled in we will try to find some second hand ones of our own.

Here are some pictures from our visit to Delft...

Our first windmill in Holland on our way to Delft

Lots of cool houses and store fronts...you will be seeing a lot of pictures like this, I just love it!

This was the very first Church we walked into (no joke) and of course the exhibition is on the House of Orange, Joel was very excited. The outside of the church is the picture below...it was hard to get a great picture because the carnival was set up right outside of it (it is much bigger than it looks).

 I love the types of baskets, crates and carriers people here have on their bikes. So cool!

I had to sit in it.

Not sure what this building was (it was closed), but it is really neat looking

My awesome bike!

We're Here!

It is 12:15pm in the Netherlands, we arrived about 3 hours ago and have nearly been awake for 24 hours now (if we can manage to stay awake for 3 more hours). Therefore understand that I am writing this post in a semi-conscious state, so hopefully it makes sense! We had an awesome flight, super smooth and three seats to ourselves! We got really lucky with the extra seat, because the flight was virtually full, it was very nice to have the extra space though.

We did not really sleep at all on the flight, it was kinda loud on board since it was the daytime for everyone still. We had two guys behind us, who I kid you not, talked the ENTIRE time....I did not think it possible for two men (or anyone for that matter) to carry on a conversation for 9 hours straight. It was impressive and rather amusing at times to say the least.

We are staying at my (Megan) dad's cousin's house in Den Hague and today will probably stick around their neighbourhood and then tomorrow they have offered their bikes to us so we are planning on biking into downtown Hague and maybe elsewhere depending what we find. It will be fun to explore some more and on bikes no less, we are excited.

After the weekend we will hopefully be looking into finding a place to rent and get more settled in, before we plan what is next on the agenda. We will keep you all updated on how that search goes:)

Cheers!
Megan&Joel

One Week

One week from now we will be boarding a plane to the Netherlands!! We are so excited for this adventure to begin. We leave Sept 14th in the afternoon and arrive on Sept 15th in the morning Holland time. There is no return flight booked but our timeline right now is 6-8 months depending how things go. We will then be staying with family to start who are graciously helping us get settled into our new home (which we also still need to find haha).

Hopefully we will find a place somewhere in or around Den Hague, but are also pretty flexible given we don't have jobs, a house or even a set plan at this point! It sounds crazy, but having all this freedom to just go with the flow is pretty liberating. I am sure it will take some time to embrace it fully (for me especially, the planner inside is struggling a little), but it is an awesome opportunity to live in a different culture, travel tons & enjoy time together as a married couple. We feel really blessed that we have the family support to enable us to essentially fly by the seat of our pants and see what happens!

We have started this blog so that we can update friends and family during this big adventure, as it unfolds. Please keep us in your prayers as we prepare to leave and during our time abroad.

We also want to hear from you while we are gone (emails, skype, etc) and if anyone wants to come visit, you have a place to stay (that is if we find one...)!

Cheers!
Megan&Joel