Initial Impressions

I have had almost a week in the Netherlands now, so it seems as best a time as any to take the time to talk about my first impressions of the Netherlands.  One of my hobbies is photography so I thought I would use the pictures I have taken to illustrate my points.

The bike in the front is mine.  It is black single speed bike.  The red seat cover is water proof and keeps the rain off.  The panneers are super helpful for carrying all my stuff in and a lot of bikes have them here.  I also have a flowery bell on it for when I am passing people.  Also, all the bikes here have this nifty back wheel lock. It takes a little longer to lock my bike up but its pretty cool.  Also, THERE ARE BIKES EVERYWHERE! A lot of people (I am assuming college students) will just abandon their bikes and lock the back wheel and then go to class or into a shop.  We were told we had to lock our bikes to something that "can't get up and walk away", hence the light pole (just for the first day, then I found the bike racks). When I first got the bike I was really apprehensive riding over 150 miles in the next two weeks with only one gear but now it feels normal.  Most of the bikes here don't really have too many gears (and many are old and crappy) so it blends in and so do I! I am getting the true Dutch experience and I am loving every minute of it.

This is the canal and draw bridge right behind my apartment building.  So beautiful.  Also, everything is so green and alive!  So not like California right now....

The Dutch rarely paint their bike lanes like in the US.  The color red is reserved for bike facilities.  Typically you will see instead of red paint to show where the bikes facilities are, the asphalt will be red!  I asked a Utrecht city official and he couldn't tell me how much if costs to make the asphalt red but he did say it cuts down on noise so that is why it is sometimes used in newer residential neighborhoods.

The other think the Dutch do is use different paver design to delineate bike lanes, or travel lanes.  I think it gives the streets character! 

This is the bike parking in the Utrecht train station.  This facility can hold over 7,500 bikes and it was full when we looked at it!  I don't have a picture of any trains but the train system is really easy to use too!

This bridge is pretty cool!  Its a bike-ped suspension swing bridge!  We also got to watch it open this morning. I was amazed how quickly is swung and how quiet it was. The whole process only took a couple of minutes. 

Can't have a blog about the Netherlands with a cameo from a windmill!

Our group doesn't stop as often as I would if I were traveling alone (to take pictures of cools things) so I have gotten really good at taking pictures while riding my bike at the same time! 

Canal life is a beautiful thing, especially if you have a stroopwaffle in your hand!

In the US, we have parklets, in Delft, they have boat-lets!

Dutch salad pancake! My first dutch dinner!