If you ever find yourself in Amsterdam, I recommend you rent a bike on your first day there. Why? Because you will have so much fun, you will not want to travel around the city in any other way, it’s so damn fun.
We rented bikes through our hotel for two of our days, which was a great arrangement because they were just right out front, and we could come and go as we wanted. The hardest thing about biking in Amsterdam is trying to find a primo parking space. There definitely aren’t enough conveniently located racks, and many people have put “No Bike” signs out in front of their houses because they know every available post or pole with have a bike locked to it in a matter of seconds. Even with the signs, there were lots of bikes locked where they shouldn’t be…
One of the nifty things about Dutch bikes is that they all have these locks that enable you to “lock” your bike without a rack. It’s a ring that goes around your back tire; when it’s in the unlock position, the rings is open and the back tire spins freely. When it’s in the lock position, it’s a closed ring that loops through your back tire, meaning a thief would literally have to carry your bike away in order to steal it. Lots of people locked their bikes this way and left it, but the preference definitely appears to be finding a rack.
Here is a full multi-level bike parking garage:
The best part about riding the bikes was that the sides of the canals are like bike super highways. Technically bikes have the right of way, so when you’re buzzing along the canals you own the road! And when we went back and forth to the Museumsplein, we actually had our own road complete with a stop light and pretty heavy traffic. Unlike a car traffic jam, there is something positively communal and fun about a bike traffic jam. Maybe if we lived there and had to deal with it everyday, bike traffic jams would piss us off too, but to me it seems like it would be hard to get too angry at people when you don’t have 1000 pounds of aluminum and engine between you.
We rode our bikes to the Vondelpark, and it was a perfect day for the occasion! The sky was blue, the air was crisp, and it seemed like all of Amsterdam was out. With the sun on your arms, the wind in your hair, and bike bells chiming, it was a pretty relaxing experience. And Vondelpark had more green than the entirety of Cyprus:
The Dutch have lots of innovative ways to carry kids and cargo on their bikes. I didn’t get examples of all of my favorites, but like a good stalker I did snap whatever I could as people rode by:
