The Bicycles

Amsterdam is a bicycling town. Now usually when you say that about a place, it means the residents are big on recreational bicycling. But in Amsterdam, bicycling is an enormously popular mode of transportation. There are thousands of people on the streets of Amsterdam on bikes. In the city center, where we stayed, the streets are narrow and every street has a dedicated bike lane. We were out during rush hour, and there were hundreds of people on bicycles obviously going to work, with a briefcase or laptop across their shoulder or attached to the back fender, or in a basket or crate in front. Some people had wooden carriers in front where they carried their dogs. One lady had 3 large dogs in one such container. We saw school-age children on bikes with their book bags, apparently headed to school. There was extremely heavy bike traffic everywhere. And there were tons of bicycles parked all over town. It wasn't unusual to see 20 or 30 parked in one spot and then another 20 or 30 more just down the road. In fact, there is a multi-story bike parking garage downtown where thousands of bikes were parked. When we walked the streets of Amsterdam, we never feared getting hit by a car, but many times we had to get out of the way of bicyclists. Joe even had a close encounter, where he got clipped by a bicyclist - but no damage done - to either Joe or the woman on the bike.