Probably the most striking thing about Amsterdam is the shear number of bikes that you see. They're everywhere - you can't find a street that doesn't have dozens of them on bike racks, on the sidewalk, chained to lightposts and around trees.
The rush hour in Amsterdam is quite a sight. Imagine a regular rush hour with lots of car traffic, plus hundreds of bikes flying by in every direction. The city is really well designed for bikes with separate bike lanes and bike traffic signals, but it's still pretty hectic (even for me who bikes a lot and biked around Boston for 4 years).
Biking is so ingrained in the culture here too. People are so natural on their bikes, and they do any number of things while they're cycling - carry someone sitting on the rear wheel rack, talk on the phone, carry an umbrella...
carry their kids (that's one on the front and one on the back you see here)....
and you even see a bunch of special bikes that are built for carrying groceries, babies or whatever cargo you need to bike with (that's a kid carrying an umbrella in the basket of the one below)...
Some intersections will have multiple roads, multiple bike lanes and multiple tram lines intersecting, but everyone on bikes just kind of rides wherever with no discernible traffic rules, it's kinda crazy. With all the people listening to iPods and talking on the phone and carrying babies and/or groceries while they're riding around it's amazing that I haven't even seen one accident yet after over two weeks. Plenty of close calls, but not one collision or fall. We'll see how long that lasts, but still pretty amazing regardless. I'm secretly hoping that the first accident I see involves someone riding into a canal... and that person isn't me.
So to fit in I had to get a bike of my own. Behold the vehicle that I purchased, which looks like it might have been manufactured any number of decades ago:
It's funny though - for all the bikes around, they pretty much all look like this. They all look really old and beaten up, and they're all cruisers - it's pretty rare to see a mountain bike or road bike, which is all you see in the US. Despite the look of it, my bike seems to be holding up pretty well, so I'll keep my fingers crossed that it stays that way....
