"House Hunter's International"

We had 30 days to find a permanent apartment. After 

struggling to find an apartment on our own (we actually only succeeded in seeing 2, one had a nice interior, but we

 later found it was not in a very safe neighborhood, and one in

 a nice area, but with a quite dated interior, the pictures made it look much better than reality) we got a real estate agent and he arranged for tours. Originally, we were to see eight apartments,

 but between his scheduling them and our going out about 

three days later, three had already been rented.

For all you fans of House Hunters Intl. that didn't see 

this on Allan's Facebook page, you can play along. 

Here are pictures of the 5 apartments we looked at. 

You can pick, which one you think we chose. 

This is House 1

This is House 2

This is House 3 

      This is House 4

 This is House 5

Our decision came down to houses 1 and 5. 

House 1 is a house in Diemen a village just outside of the

 south side of Amsterdam.

 It is 160 square meters, 2 floors

 with 2 small gardens. It is close to work and church, which

 are both on the south side of Amsterdam.

 House 5 is on  the south side of central Amsterdam 

with a gorgeous view  of one of the canals. 

It is 120 square meters and on the 3rd and 4th floors

of a building. I never thought we could 

afford an apartment this large right on the canal. 

It was a really hard decision. After much debate, we decided

we can always go into the city and see the canals, but

 we weren't quite ready for the constant noise and

trying to ride our bikes on the congested streets.

So, we chose the village house.

 We bought our bikes on Saturday and rode to 

church in less than 15 minutes on Sunday.

 On Monday, Allan rode to work in just under 25 minutes, 

despite being out of shape. Plenty of people blew

 past him on the bike paths.