Amsterdam, City of Bikes

We arrived in Amsterdam a few days ago from Germany on schedule. As the train rolled into this region you could see the transformation from car culture to bikecentricity. It looked like folks were on bikes everywhere. People of all ages were out on their bikes.  Casually dressed folks and women in high heels with men in the occasional suit. I saw two high school age kids holding hands while they were rolling along. Where people were not on bikes there were just bikes everywhere locked to everything with the most serious locks and chains I have ever seen. At the train stations you didn't see rows of cars, but racks and racks and racks of bicycles.  You may have to see this image at full size to appreciate it. 

Almost the first thing we did in Amsterdam was learn how to cross the street all over again. We stepped into the death zone without even realizing it, but quickly learned that we weren't in Kansas any more. Only the biggest streets in Amsterdam are like this and we found one of them on our maiden walk. This particular crossing had eight lanes of traffic for us to navigate. The first and last being the silent but only painful bike lane where bikes do have the right of way. The 2nd, 3rd, 6th and 7th lanes were for cars who seemed to yield a lot more than bikes. Finally the 4th and 5th lanes for the silent and proven deadly electric trams.

Tram tracks at least clue you into doing a check for that big boy, cars I can handle, but the bike lane is something else. During our visits to China and Vietnam you could always hear the scooters and with that sonic information your mind could roughly calculate time to collision and adjust without a necessary visual. But with bikes there is little other sensory data other than sight. All well and good, simply look for them to the right as you cross the near lane and to the left when crossing the far lane, just as you would for a car. Except that some bike lanes are two way and the ones that are not seem to usually have some nut riding the wrong direction. It's all a lot of fun as long as we don't cause someone too much pain. 

If you keep your eyes peeled there seem to be a lot of interesting bikes out there amongst throngs that would be at home in the goodwill lineup. This one has a shaft drive whose housing doubles as a chainstay, pretty cool. 

We are once again on the top floor and in a very large apartment. We always seem to be on the top floor and always without an elevator. After we dropped our bags we went to check the town out a bit. Amsterdam is a bit like Venice in that it is built up from the water and has a canal system as well. While this city is not sinking like some parts of Venice you can see the visible effects of inconsistent settling with buildings as odd angles. This image is not a result of camera distortion, the buildings to the left of the one that is center frame are very off kilter.

The buildings seem to be more deep than they are wide, like good old number 5, which is one window wide as you go up. 

We spotted a cheese shop and had to go in for samples and some purchases. I started eating mass quantities of cheese when we arrived. Beginning with Feta in Greece, Gruyeres in Switzerland, not sure what we had in France, we had super stinky Havarti in Germany and now in Holland we are eating a lot of Gouda. I cannot stop eating it. I think I have a cheese hangover, must be clogging my arteries. 

The girls room had a very nice slant to it and their heads were effectively on the downside. Remember the settling buildings?  So they flipped themselves around and have been that way ever since. 

Images in Amsterdam Day 1.