I ventured out of the my French cave this weekend and went north to Amsterdam to see what life is like in the low countries. Wow, is that city great or what? It is nicer, less touristy Venice, at least canalwise. But, enough about how wonderful it was, let's get to what really fascinated me about Amsterdam: the traffic. Never in my life have I seen so many different modes of transportation with their own lanes of traffic, each at a different height than the one before it. First you have, of course, the car lane, where Dutch drivers wisk around curbs at speeds that make you wonder if the French didn't colonize to the north as well. Then you have the tram lane, which is a few inches higher than the car lane, but in which cars drive as well. Trams give about a millisecond forwarning that they are going to move, so if you don't have your wits about you, you will be run over by a tram and the driver has no problems with that apparently. There is no waiting for the pedestrian to safely cross. Then you have the bike lane. The bike lane runs right next to the sidewalk, but is on a different level as well. DO NOT WALK IN THE BIKE LANE. Bikes are similar to trams in that they don't care if they hit you. There are tons of bikes. Actually, there are hundreds of millions of tons of bikes in Amsterdam and they are all old school style. I think we saw one person with a mountain bike. Everything else looks like it is from the 70s or something. And they are everywhere, it is completely uncontrolable. They also use the tram lane, as well as the car lane. So, the lowdown is that you must look both ways about 10 different times to cross what is essentially one street.
Luckily for us, everyone speaks English in Amsterdam. And they speak it well. So it you are thinking of going, go, GO NOW, it is a wonderful city full of nice people and no dog droppings. Oh, but be forwarned, it looks like a war zone right now as we think they are attempting to recobblestone the entire city at the same time, so there are a lot of roads torn up. We spent the weekend walking in a lot of mud and dirt, none of which was appealing. But I'm sure it will look wonderful as soon as they finish it. And, unlike in France, we actually saw people working on the roads all weekend (with the exception of Sunday of course), so it might even be done soon. Then again, there were a lot of roads torn up.
Conclusion du weekend: Amsterdam rocks, but practice looking both ways accross the street before going 'cause you will do it alot. And don't bring nice shoes if you plan on walking anywhere.