Westerpark

Viewing: Westerpark

Rollende Keukens

Last weekend was awesome, and not just because it was my first Mother’s Day. It was a long weekend in the Netherlands for Hemelvaartsdag, or Ascension Day, which meant our little family spent four whole days together. Yay! Even better, we had a great place to spend the long weekend: at Westerpark for Rollende Keukens, or Rolling Kitchens.

As the name suggests, Rollende Keukens is all about meals on wheels. At this yearly festival, dozens of mobile kitchens roll into Westerpark to create one giant open-air restaurant.

Of the food festivals and markets I’ve been to, I have to say this one was the most fun and full of character. That’s what you get when you have creative foodies repurposing everything from Volkswagen camper vans to Airstream trailers to surfboards and boats.

More (lots more!) pictures, and my Rollende Keukens favorites and regrets, after the cut!

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Posted on May 14, 2013
Category: Food & Drink, Life in Amsterdam · Labels: Amsterdam, food, Westerpark

Sunday stroll in the park

Sometimes I wonder what I’d be doing if I was living back home in Manila. On a Sunday, for example, Marlon and I would probably, like most young Filipino families like us, take our daughter to the mall for a meal and a walk.

The difference in what-could-be really strikes me on weekends like the ones we’ve had recently. I thought I would miss shopping malls when I moved to Europe, but I don’t. Not when we have this.

On one of our weekend walks in Westerpark, we explored an idyllic footpath that brought us you closer to nature. I still have a hard time believing that this is literally minutes from my house, and I live so close to the center of Amsterdam. [Read more...]

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Posted on May 6, 2013
Category: Life in Amsterdam · Labels: Amsterdam, Tala, Westerpark

Westergasterras

One of my new pleasures is taking Tala on long walks in Westerpark. I’ve been meaning to show Marlon what I’ve discovered while he’s at work, and to bring the camera too. This weekend I finally got to do both.

After a long winter, spring is finally kicking in and everything is in bloom.

During my first spring in Amsterdam, I was surprised by how quickly the flowers came and went. Now I make sure to take photos before they’re gone.

Walking past all the trees in bloom, we reached the Westergasterras, a restaurant housed in one of the old brick factory buildings beside the Gashouder, a gas tank that dates back to the 1900s.

The Gashouder looms large over the restaurant’s biggest draw: a large, spacious terrace that is perfect for sunny days. Westergasterras also has a cool industrial interior, with a big brick fireplace and metal pipes everywhere, but in spring it’s all about this terrace.

We stopped for a light lunch and coffee, plus one of the best sticky toffee cakes I’ve had in a while. I find casual dining in Amsterdam to be hit and miss, so it’s always nice to come across a place with good food.

I love discovering places like Westergasterras: so cool yet so laid-back, unpretentious, and most importantly, kid-friendly. There was a high hipster-to-stroller ratio, and all around the restaurant were toddlers wheeling around on loopfiets (balance bikes) or kids drawing on the ground with chalk.

A decent lunch, a cool new discovery, and another reason to love our neighborhood. Not bad for a laid-back Sunday. How was your weekend?

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Posted on April 29, 2013
Category: Food & Drink, Life in Amsterdam · Labels: Amsterdam, brunch, food, Westerpark

Rainarai at the Westergasfabriek

Our first walk in the park as a family not only made me feel giddy and happy. It also made me hungry! Luckily, at the tail end of Westerpark is Rainarai, a restaurant and lounge that serves “nomadic Algerian” cuisine.

We decided to pop in for a bite and a bit of a rest after our walk and I’m glad I did. Finding a place like this just minutes from our home makes me feel like we moved into the right neighborhood.

At 2:30pm on a sunny Saturday, we had the entire place to ourselves and it was just great.

Aside from regular restaurant-style tables and chairs, I love that this restaurant offers “nomadic” style seating with low tables, cushions and rugs on the floor. So comfy, casual and colorful!

Rainarai struck me as being very baby- and kid-friendly. Wide shallow steps leading up to the door made it easy to carry our stroller in (a ramp would have been nice, though). Wide aisles made it easy for us to park our sleeping beauty right beside our table as we enjoyed a long-ish, leisurely lunch.

We had the €12.50 mezze lunch, something like a chef’s special that includes soup, salad, a few sides like a kofta and vegetable relishes, plus a main dish. That day, it was a baked tortilla-style roll stuffed with our choice of mackerel or lamb. Delicious, filling, hearty and I’d say pretty good value for money.

The service was friendly too, something not to be taken for granted in Amsterdam. Or maybe people are just nicer to you when you have a baby! The woman waiting on us that afternoon offered me use of the downstairs lounge if I wanted privacy for breastfeeding, and told me Tala was probably the youngest guest they’d ever had.

“I hope we’ll see you again,” she said as we rolled out the front door.

Are you kidding? Yummy food, baby-friendly and cool interiors, plus friendly service, all within walking distance from my house? “Oh, we’ll definitely be back,” I assured her.

“Then we’ll get to see her grow up!” she said with a big smile and a goodbye wave to Tala.

And that is how you win over the mommies, folks!

3 Comments
Posted on April 10, 2013
Category: Food & Drink, Life in Amsterdam · Labels: Amsterdam, baby, food, Westerpark

A walk in Westerpark

After three weeks of being bound to hospital and house, Tala and I took our first walk in the park this weekend. It was chaos getting mommy and baby dressed and ready to go (do daddies ever have this problem?), but what a feeling when we finally made it out the front door!

Being from a land where babies go out in cotton tops and diapers, I need to get used to dressing Tala for cold weather. Tying on her little knit hat made me terrified that I would accidentally choke her. The fact that she hates being dressed up (a child of mine that hates clothes? This cannot be!) didn’t make it easier. But once she was bundled up in her bassinet, she was totally fine and slept, as the saying goes, like a baby.

It was a sunny spring weekend and I was glad to finally be out and about. This is how long I’ve been away from the Philippines, a notoriously walking-averse nation: I now fantasize about and enjoy going on walks.

We are so lucky to live close to Westerpark, one of Amsterdam’s biggest city parks. Within the park is the Westergasfabriek, a former gasworks that dates back to 1885. After it closed in 1967, the beautiful brick buildings in the complex were given over to creative workspaces, festivals and events.

There’s always something going on here, and I love that energy.

Westerpark is also dotted with public art, which made our walk even more fun.

And look! Regular, non-pregnancy clothes! Although I did wear this dress from Bleach Catastrophe during my last trimester. I still need to edit my closet and see what outfits are both nursing-friendly and more forgiving to my post-partum silhouette.

I was so excited to be out in the sun with Marlon and Tala that I ended up pushing myself a little more than I should. By the time we got back home, I could hardly walk, and I was in serious pain for the rest of the evening. It’s easy to forget what happened to me, and I constantly have to remind myself to be more patient with myself and my body. But I’m so glad I had this sunny Saturday at the park with my family. Here’s to many more to come!

11 Comments
Posted on April 8, 2013
Category: Life in Amsterdam · Labels: Amsterdam, first, Tala, Westerpark

House hunt: What happens next

Once Marlon and I had decided on The One, I was nervous about bidding. I didn’t want someone else to get it first, and I didn’t want the owners to junk our offer!

It turned out to be surprisingly easy. Things went fast—really fast. Via our broker, we bid below than the asking price first thing Monday, and were rewarded for our promptness by being the first (and I suspect the only ones) in line. The owners (via their broker) counter-bid on Tuesday; we counter-counter-bid, they replied with their final price, and we put in one last counter-offer on Wednesday. By Thursday evening, the owners had accepted our offer and the apartment was ours! Or at least one step closer to being ours, officially.

Since then, I’ve allowed myself to get a little more infatuated with “our” apartment. In fact, last weekend I kind of stalked it. We visited the Sunday market at Westerpark (which is awesome and deserves another post), just minutes from “our” new place. To take the tram home, we walked through “our” street. It was lovely and I couldn’t believe we would be owning a home here soon. It felt like we had made the right decision.

However, there’s much to be done before I can drop the quotation marks from “our” apartment/”our” street. Here’s where we get into the nitty-gritty of buying a house in the Netherlands, and where we’re more than happy to pay a small premium for an English-speaking, expat-friendly broker to help us through the not-so-fun stuff. Of which there is a lot.

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9 Comments
Posted on October 9, 2012
Category: Life in Amsterdam · Labels: Amsterdam, Europe, house hunting, Westerpark

House hunt: The One

I could tell you about the eight other apartments that we viewed after that first housing tour (nearly three weeks ago, but only blogged this week), bringing our total count to 14.

I could tell you about the place we viewed that ticked all my boxes on paper, but freaked me out when I stepped into the long, narrow, neck-like hallway leading to the bedrooms and realized that I could not be alone in it. Ever. Especially not at night.

I could tell you about the third-floor apartment in the Museum Quarter that I fled from before I even stepped in. I opened the front door, saw a vertical wall of stairs, said “No f*cking way” and walked off. (Good thing our broker wasn’t with us for that one.)

I could tell you about the places that came close. Or I could just tell you that we found The One.

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16 Comments
Posted on October 5, 2012
Category: Life in Amsterdam · Labels: Amsterdam, Europe, house hunting, Westerpark

House hunt: Westerpark

(Go west!) Life is peaceful there
(Go west!) In the open air
(Go west!) Where the skies are blue
(Go west!) This is what we’re gonna do
-Go West, Pet Shop Boys

Is it possible to fall in love with a neighborhood? It seems that’s exactly what happened when Westerpark and I met for the first time.

It was a sunny Sunday morning when Marlon and I cycled to Westerpark for a look-see. We’d seen a few promising, budget-friendly apartments in the area on Funda but didn’t know much about the neighborhood, so we decided to go and check it out ourselves.

Living in the rather posh Oud Zuid has spoiled us, so we were a little tentative about the surroundings at first. It wasn’t seedy or creepy or anything like that, but you just kind of get used to being surrounded by cravat-wearing, Lexus-driving people in this area. I know, it’s not normal.

But low-key Westerpark had a few tricks up its sleeve. The first arrow into my heart came as Marlon and I were peeking into a ground floor apartment that we were thinking of viewing.

The place was nicely done up for sure, but that wasn’t what got me. It was the sweet little old lady that tottered up to us in her housecoat and walker as we had our noses pressed up against the window.

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