Library!

Brian and I discovered the library yesterday, and it's amazing!

It's only a five-minute bike ride from our house, and it's huge - apparently it's the largest library in Europe and was designed by some famous architect (Jo Coenen & Co for any of you who are familiar with modern architecture).

On the nine floors there are comfy chairs, a huge restaurant, a cafe, wireless internet and computers everywhere, and lots of books and magazines - even some English ones!

It took us long enough to get there, but now that we've found it, both Brian and I agree we're going to want to spend a lot of time there, especially on the long, rainy winter days to come.

The front of the library (called bibliotheek in Dutch)

A bird's eye view of one of the floors

Brian enjoying Newsweek magazine in the cafe

- Krista

Our Amsterdam Apartment

Well I've been living in our new place in Amsterdam for just about a solid week and a half now (it feels like much longer!) and have been trying hard to get settled in.

While Brian has been at work, I've been busy organizing closets, cupboards, kitchens, etc., to try and make our apartment feel more like a home.

We even made an Ikea trip last weekend which of course turned out to be a bit of a nightmare (they refused to ship everything because they said "they would break it" so we had to take a gigantic plant and a huge bag full of glass items back with us on the subway - not fun).

So far, we both really like our new home - it's very spacious, light, and a bit quirky, but one can only expect that from an old European home. Plus, the location is fantastic, we can walk/bike to everything.

And even though it's not quite there yet - we only have two plants and we have tons of picture frames that we intend on filling with wedding photos and such but have no idea where to get them printed - I thought I'd put up a few photos to give you a taste of our new life.

Our living room/dining room (it's split level, so we can watch TV on the upper level under the skylight)

Our bathroom (you get used to the orange tiles after a while...)

Our bedroom - it's hard to tell from the picture, but it's way bigger than the one in Portland was, and very comfortable

Our kitchen - it's really nice to cook in, especially because we get to use all our fun new kitchen stuff from our wedding

Our European rooftop view (apparently most Dutch people prefer to be on the ground floor because then they can have a garden, but we much prefer the top floor, steep stairs and all)

And don't forget, if you're ever in the neighborhood we'd love to have you come visit...

Miss you all, can't wait to see some of you in December, it's not very far away!

- Krista

Relaxing in Santorini

Life got a bit more relaxing the moment we got off the plane from Athens and stepped out on the Greek island of Santorini. We stayed in two towns while we were there - one called Parissa and another called Oia (pronounced "ia").

Parissa was a really cute, tiny town right on the coast of the island. There were great black sand beaches (the island was produced by a volcano) and cute little bakeries and yummy places to eat. The town itself was pretty quiet because we came during the very end of the high season, so basically all we did the entire time we were there was lay on the beach (we got in the water a couple of times, but it was so much colder than the water in Costa Rica!!), which is exactly what we needed.

Oia is a little tourist town nestled on a cliff known for having the best sunsets in the world (see below). It was a beautiful little town, full of white Spanish-style buildings and cute little pathways, but it was a little bit too touristy for me. The second we got there we heard all these American voices, and we hadn't met any other Americans our entire time in Greece. It also was not a very young crowd. And compared to Parissa, it was packed - I'm just thankful we didn't go during the high season, I was claustraphobic enough as it was! We had a great time though, and yes, we saw the sunset, and it was very pretty, although I almost prefer the one at my parents' house...

Below are a few pictures from the trip:

Sitting on a black sand beach in Parissa

The town of Oia

A little fishing village down from Oia - we walked down a road to get here and then walked up a really long, steep staircase to get back to the town - trust me, it was a lot of stairs


The sunset at Oia

- Krista

Chaos in Athens

After Oktoberfest, Ann and I let Brian go back to work in Amsterdam while we traveled on to Athens, Greece. We had made the decision to go there about three weeks before the wedding, and I found out later it was all based on Ann's recent viewing of the movie Mama Mia. Well we got there, and... well, we definitely had an adventure, that's for sure.

We had decided before the trip that we would go back to our college days and stay in youth hostels to be cheap and to meet other travelers. We booked the hostels online and relied on the reviews of previous travelers to decide where to stay. This was mistake number one. When we arrived at the hostel, it was unclean, had no outlets in the room, and was far away from all the cool and interesting neighborhoods. Luckily we coughed up the extra 10 euros each to stay in a private room (for those of you who have never stayed in one, most hostel rooms consist of around 6 to 40 people staying in bunk beds), but it still wasn't great.

Well both of us were fine than the less-than-luxurious lodging, although I think that we are convinced that neither of us will ever stay in a youth hostel ever again (as Brian kept reminding us, we're not in college anymore). So we tried to make the most of our stay, and do the touristy thing, although the only real sightseeing thing we did was go see the Acropolis, which was interesting and very pretty, pictures of which are below. Other than that we basically just walked miles and miles each day to try and people watch and get a sense of the city.

We had an okay time - although we discovered that hummus is not in fact Greek food (don't ever ask for hummus in Greece - it's a sore subject for them), and we had a hard time getting away from the ultra-touristy restaurants because we didn't quite understand the neighborhoods or how to find anything.

Our opinion of the city really started to go downhill though when on the second day I put my Amsterdam debit card into an ATM machine and it decided to eat my card and none of the bank employees would help me. Luckily I had a few other cards with me, but it was a pain and I am now incredibly paranoid about putting my card into an ATM machine in Greece ever again - apparently this is not a rare occurrence there.

Then, on the day we were supposed to leave for the Greek Island of Santorini, we had an absolutely terrible time getting to the airport, an experience which has forever tainted my view of Greek public transportation.

Our flight was at 10:30, and the airport isn't close - it took us about an hour from the metro on the way to the city. Well, we had read that the metro system starts at 5:30 a.m., so we were planning to get up a bit early so we wouldn't cut it close.

The trouble started when I set the alarm an hour late (it was still set on Amsterdam time). Then, we ran with our suitcases to the metro station only to discover that the metro wasn't opening until 9:00 that day (what?!? with no notice or anything? I still don't understand how a major metropolitan city can do this). After that, we were a little frazzled but remembered reading that we could also take a bus to the airport. So we asked some people which bus went all the way out there, and the response was that "there was no bus going to the airport that day."

Okay... by this time, we were getting pretty nervous, because it would be a pain to miss our flight and frankly both of us wanted to get out of that hectic city. Since we had no other option, we decided to catch a taxi. But... there were no taxis. Or they were all full. We stood by the curb by a sign marked "taxi" with about 10 other people and watched taxis zoom past without stopping. We waved and waved but no taxi came for us. A few stopped, but when we said "airport" they had no idea what we were referring to so they left abruptly. Finally, about 45 minutes later, an empty taxi actually stopped and we ran up to it, flapping our arms like wings and pointing to our bags, saying "airport, airport!" The guy didn't speak English, but he got the point.

We made our flight - despite the fact that we were stuck in traffic the whole time and we arrived at the airport barely 45 minutes before it was scheduled to leave.

The moral of the story it that if you ever have a desire to go to Athens, make sure and stay in a decent hotel in a nice neighborhood, hold on to your credit cards, and triple check the transportation situation so you'll be able to make it to the airport!

The Parthenon (See all that construction? In 1975 the Greek government decided it was time to restore the monument, and more than 30 years later, it's still not finished...)

Beautiful views from the top of the Acropolis

And another view

Ann and I standing in front of one of the Acropolis monuments (I have no idea which one)

- Krista

Rockin' Oktoberfest

The day after I flew into Amsterdam from Portland, I met Brian and my friend Ann in Munich, Germany for Oktoberfest. Ann and I were both jetlegged and exhausted, and we all were sharing one tiny hotel room that was three times the usual rate (everyone hikes up the prices because they know people will come anyway) and far away from town, but we had a blast.

The city was beautiful, and everything was incredibly festive. All the different beer tents had their own themes (one looked surprisingly like Hogwarts from Harry Potter), the people were all dressed up in lederhosen and dirndls (traditional Bavarian wear) and we drank liters - yes liters - of great beer.

We had a great time exploring the city, and talking with the locals. Surprisingly, we barely saw any other Americans - there were lots of Germans and Italians, but very few people from the U.S. Here are a few highlights below:

Ann and I modeling the dorky beer hats people wear - no, we didn't actually buy them

Brian and I trying to finish our beers

Ann and I on the second day of Oktoberfest

Prost! (that means cheers in German)

- Krista

Wedding photos - finally!

So it's almost a month after the wedding and I'm finally getting some wedding photos up online. It's a work in process - our photographer gave us over 900 photos so I've been busy sorting through them all - but keep checking periodically for updates.

Click here to go to my Picassa page to view the photos.

And I've put a few below in case you don't have time to check out the whole bunch.




Thanks again for everyone's love and support! We had an amazing time!

- Krista