'My' house...

Rijswijk has, at some time, been a village quite separate from Den Haag. Now it is a part of the city. Bilderdijklaan (the street name) runs off the main route from Den Haag to Delft. I can get off the tram from the central city and walk two minutes to the house. It's not an affluent part of the city but I like it. 

The church around which the nearby shops are clustered

Bilderdijklaan is a tree-lined street of three-story apartment blocks. 'My' house is on levels two and three. So you come in through a tiny entrance garden, through the front door and up the steepest, curved flight of stairs imaginable. On the first floor are the kitchen (tiny), a toilet (even tinier) and a huge, airy living, dining and study area which was once three separate rooms but now runs the entire length of the house. I love this room. Through one window you look out onto Bilderdijklaan, the apartments across the road and all the activity below. Through the back window you glimpse lots of greenery in the back gardens of further adjacent apartments. 

No 35 on the second and third levels

Up another similarly steep flight of stairs are a bedroom, bathroom, another toilet, a study (for Merel) and Lauren's music room where she teaches piano and practices her singing. I am sleeping in this room - a mattress on the floor (there is only one bed in the house). I don't have to be on the floor - it is my choice to stay here; the mattress is very comfortable and I am very happy.

'The stairs' - impossible to capture their steepness and narrowness but you get the idea...