A Lengthy Bike Ride

The next day was also quite fun. We explored the city some more, and on Wednesday afternoon we rented two bikes from our hotel. Now, in Amsterdam, pretty much everyone rides a bike at least some of the time, if not most of the time. Bikes have their own lanes, their own stoplights, even their own roads in some areas. It's really quite lovely. The Dutch ride amazingly fast, with no helmets, often with 2-3 children attached in various ways, and never seem to have any trouble. We were a little nervous about navigating through downtown Amsterdam, so we headed out of town on our rented bikes.


You can see our route here. It was a wonderful ride along the Amstel river through some beautiful countryside. There were people boating, rowing, lots of bikers, and people generally enjoying the outdoors. We saw a couple of windmills, and lots of beautiful farms with all manner of crops and animals. We wound up in the village Ouderkerk aan de Amstel, which is a lovely little town with a beautiful church. We ate at one of the best restaurants ever (really—top 5, at least), De Oude Smidse. We enjoyed all our food in Amsterdam, but this was the best. We had an amazing salad, grouper served on ratatouille, and cherry chocolate cake with white chocolate mousse.

Note all the bikes parked out front!

Then we biked home (with a little detour—our map wasn't as detailed as would be hoped), in time to see the sunset from our room. It was a wonderful day!