Skip to main content

July 23rd


Tuesday was our last morning in Utrecht and our first day in Amsterdam. How'd we get to Amsterdam you ask? We biked of course! We saddled up our touring bikes one last time and rode 44 KM north to Amsterdam. 

I'd have to say that if I ranked all four of our long bike tours, this one would be number one. This is for a few reasons; the main one being separation from car traffic. We were rarely near roads or streets with cars on them, and when we were the vehicles came few and far between. This really helped me enjoy my ride through the Dutch countryside, in fact, I often found myself feeling like it was just a bike ride, not a commute. This was a stark contrast from the previous rides where it was hard to forget we were commuting from one place to another. Not to say I didn't like the other rides, but when there are now cars around you, you have the ability to let your mind wander a lot more. This is one of my favorite parts of long-distance bike rides, it's kind of like taking a two-hour-long deep breath. 

Another thing that surprised me how good the bicycle infrastructure was throughout Amsterdam. As soon as we hit the outskirts of the city the red asphalt and bike stoplights began to show up. Even better was the fact they weren't few and far between either, the infrastructure was showing up just as commonly as it does in the city center. This shows that the city is trying to make it possible for everyone to commute by bike if they want. It's so awesome to see a whole country make an effort to allow people to get anywhere from anywhere by bike. Whether it be from city to city, a suburb to cit, or trips within a city, you can bike. This kind of holistic thinking is how you make large scale differences and changes. It gives me some hope that people can really make a change in the world of transportation. 


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

July 5th

I arrived in Copenhagen last night after a grueling 10-hour layover in Iceland due to layovers. On my way to the hostel, I got lost multiple times. If it weren't the open friendliness of the people who live here I might not have ever found my hostel in the first place. Someone actually went out of their way to ask if I was lost and give me directions. Due to jet lag and people who snore louder than Snorlax himself, I could barely get any sleep. So I decided at 6:00 AM to get up and get lost... this was the best decision I could have made! During my exploration, I started noticing things about the city that make it seem so ideal. There's a park every few blocks, barely any litter, beautiful street art, everyone bikes, and everyone to respect one another as well as there surroundings. Later on in the day once our group had settled in and rented bikes, we made it a goal to get lost again. This was a completely different experience on bikes. Not only can you see much more...
Post a Comment
Read more

July 21st

On Sunday the group and I had the opportunity to tour the countryside surrounding Utecht by following the river Rhine, as well as experience the suburb master-planned for bike use known has Houten. The ride to Houten was absolutely beautiful. Full of great views, WW2 bunkers, tons of sheep and cattle, and even a stop to swim, I must say I thoroughly enjoyed it. A lot of this ride was either on or adjacent to the roadway in which cars and motorcycles were going pretty fast. At first, this was a scary thought, but to our luck, the power bikes have over moto vehicles in the city carried over to the countryside. Cars and cycles would either wait until they had a safe way to pass us and go around if needed and all of them slowed down significantly when coming near and passing us. This reassured me that I, in fact, was safe. This experience was a little to me. Not that I felt unsafe biking around the countryside of Denmark or Sweden, but here it really felt like I was the m...
Post a Comment
Read more

July 17th

July 16th was the first and only full day we had in Malmö. It started with a lecture from two of Malmö's urban planners in their city hall building. Malmö is growing extremely fast and what the citie's plan is to not increase car use as the population increases. They plan to do this in many ways, one being infrastructure. Right now they are trying to rethink the street, they call it Bicycle streets 2.0. Their ideas include cutting cars out of roads and making them specifically for bikes, giving bikes right aways in intersections and adding in bidirectional bike paths. I found that the idea of bidirectional pathways bad, and even unnecessary at some points, even though the Malmöplanners decided on them through doing tons of research. I didn't spend to much time on the cities bike lanes but when I was on the bi-directional pathways, I felt very uncomfortable. Bikes are coming at you from the opposite direction, often in very close quarters. I understand that on some small s...
Post a Comment
Read more