Getting around Amsterdam

“That’s it. I’m an official American,” said Petunia after a near miss from bicyclist, who had yelled “Get out of the way, idiot.”

Welcome to Amsterdam, home of high speed lunatic bike riders. They ignore traffic lights and will run onto the narrow sidewalks when they think the bicycle lane isn’t wide enough. Amsterdam is one of the few places on earth where the bicycles outnumber the people. The bikes outnumber the people because they forgot where they locked them up. We saw a few locked bicycles dangling off the bridges into the canals. We saw bicycles locked up anyplace one could throw a bike chain and a padlock around something solid. Some had multiple bike locks. There has to be a point when Hans locks his bicycle up with so many other bicycles he never finds it again or wonders where he dropped the key to a padlock. My great unsolved mystery: could a guy with cable cutters make ends meet liberating bicycles?

Sometimes we would seem the bikes modified as small pickup trucks. There is no limit on modified bicycles in Amsterdam. However, we didn’t see any modified as a taxi. Only second to the bicycles are mopeds. Compact cars take a third place, mostly because of expensive gasoline (by US standards), cramped streets many of which have banned cars because the street isn’t wide enough. Common advice from travel gurus: don’t rent a car. Any place that could be used as street parking was already taken. If they have public parking garages, they hide them from view.

We could have rented a bicycle if we wanted a life of danger. Major deal: when the locals are playful, they throw the yellow tourist bikes into the canal. For those who want to risk it all, rent a bicycle that isn’t yellow.

An excellent solution for Petunia and I was their public transportation system. We bought the three day pass which works for both trolleys (also called “trams”) and buses at the airport. Buses and trolleys would arrive on average of five minutes apart. One must scan the pass both when getting on or off, otherwise the ticket becomes invalid. Just in case riders forget, there is a recorded announcement in English (along with other languages) at every stop to scan the ticket on the way out.