sunday in the 'dam

hallo,

it's sunday morning here and im writing this so that you sydneysiders have something to read with your coffee on monday. the 'dam is a very beautiful city, we've been here since tuesday which seems to have flown by in a haze of coffee, delicious cheese, world cup stuff and generally just trawling around the city through the cobblestone(y) streets and over the canals. we've done some museums and the red light district and spent most of yesterday lying in vondel park reading the papers and watching the dutchies, who are extremely relaxed and generally very warm people. they 'do' summer extremely well here - everyone's sitting outdoors and riding around on bikes and nobody much gives a shit about anything.

we've been staying in this really nice apartment for the week so (apart from the trawling) it's been nice to cook again and i've read a couple of books and have been sleeping soundly for the first time in ages. we're on the top floor and our bathtub is in the loft where we're sleeping, which overlooks the rijks museum. we are staying in a great part of town called the pipe (de pijp) which is named for its windy narrow streets which are easy to navigate. there's a pub on either corner of our block, two coffee shops across the way and the albert crupmarket at the end of the street which is crammed with fresh fruit and veges and fish and whatever else you could possibly need. i really like it here.

i am still trying to see what i can do about setting up house here for a few months and finding some work, but it's proving quite difficult, the dutchies have this strange circular paperwork trail going on which is a bit too banal to go into, suffice to say that it might take me a couple of months to be able to actually start working, which i cant really afford to do at this stage... well i can, but it might mean cutting out parts of the trip i really want to do also. so we shall see. i am still working on it and when i figure out what i'm doing i will let you know. sorry there's not been any emails for a while, as i said i am preoccupied with paperwork of another kind at the moment. but i love and miss you all very much and love hearing about what's going on at home.

im off to portugal on tuesday for a week or so, where i intend to catch some sun and have a think about what i'm doing next. im going with my friend michelle and two of her friends (one, sarah, who i met in macc) and we are staying at a tres swanky resort in the algarve, which mich's parents own. im looking forward to it. huey is heading back home, i think, and NJ as usual is in two minds about pretty much everything. i hope he never changes - he is extremely entertaining to watch.

i'll leave you with some pics - have given up on captions completely...

bye-bye now
xo

PS check back two posts for some pics of my new niece, Darcy.