Sometimes, I really miss Amsterdam. The little piece of Amsterdam that Gabriel and I carved out for ourselves. Yes, we explored the whole city, from top to bottom, inside and out. But there was still a small piece of the city that was ours: our favourite restaurants, our favourite ice cream shops, our favourite stores. Do you ever notice that, when living in a city, there eventually becomes a small square of it that you frequent every day, which makes it seem like a small town? The rest of the city is merely a 10 minute walk away, but yet that little niche is yours.
For Gabriel and I, that little niche consisted of steak dinners at Helden, nightly walks to Ijscuypje for ice cream cones, burgers at Burgermeester, daily trips to the Albert Cuyp market, grocery shopping at Dirk, movies at the Munt theatre, walks along the Amstel river, and weekend strolls up and down the Prinsengracht. The rest of Amsterdam is beautiful, but these places were our home. After nearly 7 months of being away from Amsterdam (I can't believe how the time has flown!), I'm happy to report that my waves of "home-sickness" are quite infrequent. However, catching a glimpse of a photo from last year, or seeing my dog-eared Amsterdam guidebook on my bookshelf, gives me a pang of Amsterdam nostalgia.
I'm really looking forward to carving out a piece of downtown Toronto that Gabriel and I can call our own. What will be our new favourite restaurant? Our new favourite streets to take after-dinner strolls? Every city has its own personality, and I'm excited to see what Toronto will offer. It will be both of our first times living downtown.
Only four more days until I'm done my final exams of the first year of my MBA program. Before entering school this year, I knew little about business besides what I had learned through osmosis from Gabriel. I can't believe the amount of knowledge I now have about business, and the amount of work that has been accomplished. Squeezing a degree into two years makes for some heavy reading!
Ok, now back to studying...
4 comments:
Thanks for sharing the gorgeous pictures! I can't wait to go back this summer :) I am definitely using a lot of your tips again :)
http://www.margaritareczek.com
I love these pictures and good luck studying. It'll all be worthwhile when you are done :)
http://hopechella.blogspot.com/
Beautiful.
I totally know what you mean by missing a city and that particular square where you used to go every day to study or do whatever. It happened to me when I went to Argentina to study for a semester. The second week of my stay there, I went to a little but more than nice square in the neighbourhood of Belgrano that was the area I had decided to rent apartments in buenos aires for all the months I was gonna be there. It had manny comfortable trees to sit on with lovely views and sun pointing to them. Loved it!
Post a Comment