Holland: Amsterdam By Bike

We had one last day left in the Netherlands, and that was the day we had to explore Amsterdam. We checked out of our place early, headed towards the city, found a park and ride with no problem…and couldn’t pay for it. The concierge said that only a certain kind of credit card was accepted—Maestro and something else that no American carries in his wallet. I was pretty much fuming inside because of the thought of getting everyone packed back into the van and trying to search for another park and ride, but then Robert put on his puppy eyes, and the guy was nice enough to let us pay cash while he just swiped his card to pay for our parking ticket. I gave him a tip, and now I am thinking how often he does that to make some extra euros-hmmm.
Without any more adventures, we hopped on the tram that took us into the heart of Amsterdam. We had about fifteen minutes to spare before our bike tour was meeting, so we went into a souvenir shop and…bought some Amsterdam hats for the kids, as the day was turning out to be a bit colder than the forecast predicted. Half of the store was definitely not PG-13 even, so I practiced my “distracting and walking quickly pass souvenirs” skill. That was the case in every souvenir store in Amsterdam, more than other places we’d visited, I must add.
Okay, so call us crazy but we decided to take a BIKE tour in Amsterdam. In AMSTERDAM! Here are some fun statistics bike facts for you (from What’s Up In Amsterdam blog):

In Amsterdam there are about 550.000 bikes and 215.000 cars.

That’s about 1.5 bike a person.

According to estimates 15% of the bikes in the street are never or rarely used.

The lost bikes depot holds 12.000 bicycles.

About 40% of these bikes are eventually being picked up by their owners.

About 50.000 bikes get stolen every year, which is 8% of the total amount of bikes. The rate for bike theft is going down fast.

6 out of 10 people who live in Amsterdam have a bike parked in the centre which they don’t use. Yes, I was a bit nervous, but I also knew that our older kids are very confident bikers. Mark got to sit in a cool trailer but Robert…oh, Robert…got to ride something that felt like maybe a tricycle? He said it was easier to maneuver it than it looked.

Forgot one detail. We show up to the meeting point, and who do we see? One of the dental techs that Robert worked with in Misawa! He is now stationed in Germany, and was here for a weekend with his friends. So of course, it was fun to hang out with someone familiar. Besides them, we had one more couple of British people, and that’s it, pretty much it was a fun private tour.

Looking back now at these pictures…everything is kind of tangled up in my memory. The narration about certain places sounds so interesting during the tour that you think you’ll never forget those facts, no way. But then you get home and—poof!—the facts are gone.

I’ll do my best.  The reason why we chose this particular tour is because this was the only one that seemed to be going in less touristy places plus omitting the Red Light District all together. Our tour lasted over three hours, as we rode through beautiful Jordaan area, passed many canals, learned why so many houses have metal hooks up by the roof (they were used to help load up purchased food through the windows) and how powerful the Netherlands once used to be.

We visited a famous area in the Jordaan district, where the poorest people of the city used to live. Over the years, it has become a very popular place to have a central flat as it was nicely cleaned up. Our guide took us to one of the very pretty courtyards that were build to house widows in the last years of their lives.

Canals, canals, canals…

We stopped for a quick bite to eat, while kids had fun drawing with chalk.

Mark drew Alex, that looked kind of like an owl, can you see it?

We rode through beautiful Vondelpark.

And all the way to the world famous Rijksmuseum, that houses masterpieces by Vermeer and Rembrandt among many others. I remember visiting this place when I was a teenager, it’s fascinating.

Despite a chilly start to the day, it really warmed up. Katya and Mark still wanted to wear their cozy hats.

And of course, a picture of me and Robert.

And this is where we had about twenty jumping pictures taken….this might be the best one…still mastering this skill-haha.

Or maybe this one…

Did you know that when Rijksmuseum was going through renovation, the people of Amsterdam said that they must have a way to bike through that massive building no matter what? Yeah…so although it was very expensive to do that, the builders made sure there is a bike path THROUGH the museum. Of course biked through it as well.

More Canals…thank you Mark for taking a ton of pictures.

Cool buildings all around.

Oh, this looks so Dutch to me. I love this type of houses.

We stopped by at a very interesting courtyard called the Begijnhof, which is the only inner court in the city founded in the Middle Ages. This is where we found the Wooden House, one of the two wooden houses that are left in the center of Amsterdam.

This is the view of the inner court.

And more canals and pretty buildings.

We were very happy that this particular bike tour finished without anyone getting lost or hit by a car. If we survived Amsterdam, we can survive any bike tour, seriously. Bikes were EVERYWHERE! Cars were zooming by us on the narrowest streets, and I am just amazed that Alex and Katya remained intact.

After the tour we went and got some yummy Indonesian food recommended by Rick Steves. It was super yummy but too spicy for Mark (not sure why).

So we had to go back to the central street and get some boring pizza baguette for the little guy before hopping on the tram to go back to our car.

What do we think of Amsterdam? Well, we think it’s very pretty with its canals and bridges BUT we all agree that the smaller towns of Netherlands, such as Haarlem and Delft had a lot more character and charm.

If I had to rate our top three things on this trip, I’d say:

1. Dutch people

2. Canals

3. Windmills (Mark wants to add #4 Herring)

Lyana.