Going Dutch: your faithful blogger takes a bike break

From markenlei.

Today I will be leaving this fine city to go visit relatives and do the tourist thing in the Netherlands (and Belgium). The Netherlands is known for its flatness, polders, rain, and, of course, bicycles. We are looking forward to bike on the expansive bikeway networks across the entire country. We're also quite happy that almost any train has a space for carrying bikes and readily available bike rentals. The trains also run very, very frequently. This may all sound like a magical, fairy land but I'm told by those who've been there that it is true.

So that means my blogging will be fairly minimal for the next couple weeks. If I feel the need to provide yet more gratuitous videos of the Dutch on their bikes (as if there weren't enough already), then I may.

This video is about Rotterdam, Netherland's second biggest city. It's interesting because Rotterdam was leveled during WWII and the city was reconstructed much more to accommodate motor vehicles than older, intact cities. As such cycling rates are a "paltry" 25%. You can see how many of the wide boulevards still share space with dedicated space for cyclists so it's not nearly as dismal as "modern" cities in North America.