(Friday, Sept. 25) Rick Steves says Amsterdam has 750,000 people and almost as many bikes. It’s more like 10 million people, 15 million bikes, half the bikes in big parking areas as at the train station, or locked to light poles or railings on bridges over the canals, and the other half being constantly ridden, day and night, by 7.5 million people (not counting kids riding on the rear fender, or in some type of box on the front of the bike), some smoking pot, many talking on cell phones (illegal to do without a Bluetooth device when behind the while of car) held to the ear with one hand while holding on to one side of the handlebars with the other hand, and all going hell-bent-for-leather, in specially marked bike lanes, in the middle of the street, or down the sidewalk, oblivious to the peril they create for pedestrians (“It’s every man, woman and child, for his or herself!”, Albert, our tour guide would tell us). And then there are the Vespas, other brands of motor scooters, Harley’s, trams, buses, taxis, big and little cars made everywhere from Asia, the Czech Republic or Romania, Volvos from Sweden, BMWS and Mercedes from Germany, and even the odd big American car, like Buicks, ready to turn you into Dutch Roadkill on Brood (bread).
Tourists (who live to tell about their visit to Amsterdam), quickly learn to walk on cobblestone surfaces (where the bikes normally don’t venture), and to cross the bike lanes and streets as quickly as possible. If you stop in the middle of a bike lane for 5 seconds to gawk at a church spire and take a photo of someone coming the other direction on a bike with a dog riding in a plastic milk carton in front of the handlebars, you’ll end up in the emergency room of one of the city’s hospital.
After visiting the Houseboat Museum today, we continued along the Prinsengracht and sat down to have a cup of coffee at a canal-side café. When I went in to use “the facilities”, I looked to my left, then to my right, before crossing the street, saw it was clear, but only got halfway across the lane before a bicyclist practically shined the toes of my shoes with his bike tires as he sped by in front of me.
