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You may have seen the quintessential piece of art that depicts Amsterdam. You know the one - there is a picturesque bridge with a canal in the background, and and on the bridge are some beautiful flowers and a single bicycle. After all, Amsterdam is known for its beautiful canals and bikes as a popular mode of transportation.
And sure, there are beautiful canals with flowers on them, but I never saw a bridge with just one single bike - or for that matter, one with less than 100+ bikes locked to it. There are so many bikes everywhere that even all the bridges in Amsterdam can't hold them. They have constructed enormous multi-story / multi block bike parking lots, and they also dock huge barges on the river just to add space for bike parking.
There are people on bikes everywhere, and the bike paths are usually adjacent to the sidewalks, which makes for some very close calls, especially with wandering tourists. At one point, we thought Mike was a goner when he mistakenly took a step into the bike lane and 2 fast bikes split around him within inches of taking him out.
Being a pedestrian is tricky - especially when wanting to cross an intersection. If you want to cross a road, you need to remain alert. There are multiple walk signals and multiple lanes of traffic. Here's how it goes: you get to the intersection and press the walk button. When you hear a sound that can best be described as a very busy woodpecker, you can begin walking. However, at any point across the multiple lanes of traffic, you may be stopped - the whole way across may not be green at the same time. Also, if you are on your way across and the woodpecker starts to slow down - you best start running across that section right away - as your right of way time is running out - quickly.
There are a lot of lanes to cross - the 1st lane (closest to you) is a bike lane (heading to your right). This is for bicycles, mopeds, and also apparently ok for a teenie car brand they have here (seriously, this thing makes the smart car look enormous). The 2nd lane is for larger motorcycles, cars and busses heading right. The 3rd and 4th lanes are for the electric trams that run on tracks (both ways). Then, the 5th, 6th and 7th lanes mirror lanes 1-3 backwards. Got it?
You have to pay serious attention to get across all 7 lanes safely. I guess it can best be described as a human sized game of frogger (showing my age? An old video game reference where you use a joystick to jump a cartoon frog across multiple lanes of traffic without him getting squished to death). I have come to the conclusion that the game designer was obviously from Amsterdam.
And yet, given all of this, we actually decided to rent some bicycles (when in Rome?). As we left the rental place and merged into the bike lane, I shouted - "it's been nice knowing you guys!"
What a wild ride! It was exciting and scary and a complete blast. The best part is that we all made it out with no injuries to ourselves or others! Oh, and finally finding the "windmill brewery" by bike was definitely a highlight of the trip!
For dinner, we rode our bikes in search of local cuisine. Last night the waiter that recommended the Bitterballen wrote down some foods on a coaster that were local fare and highly recommended, but he said very hard to find. We were on a mission. As we rode from place to place, instead of trying to pronounce the dishes, Tom would just keep showing the coaster. We finally found the restaurant that served our "coaster food", and it was delicious!!!
Other highlights from today: the Van Gogh Museum was incredible! (Although no Starry Night?!). And our canal boat trip ride was very beautiful - what a great way to see the city.
Tomorrow we wrap up Amsterdam and take an overnight ferry over to the UK - Hadrian's Wall awaits!
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Kathryn Kanaan The silver fox! Tom's hair looks great!