Outdoors in Amsterdam

While we struggled with the bicycle-centric streets (where pedestrians often got a 3 foot wide sidewalk, with obstacles, while bikes had a lovely wide path), there was much we loved about our visit to Amsterdam.

The canals:

There are 165 or so canals, and over 1200 bridges over those canals, making for some very picturesque walks.

 

 

Lots of small boats on the canals.

 

No, we didn't see any Stand Up Paddle Boards on the canals.

 

Bikes are locked up along nearly every part of the canals.

 

Houseboats: there are many of them on the canals in Amsterdam.

 

View from one of the many bridges, though this one surprisingly didn't have bikes chained to every part of the bridge: we only saw that on the Amstel River, interestingly.

 

We ate lunch with this view at a café.

 

Sunset on the Amstel, our favorite canal.

 

 

View of a canal from our obligatory boat ride along the canals.

 

 

 

The street markets and cafes were also pleasures, as was the famous Vondelpark:

A big street market in Amsterdam: we bought bread, cheese and pepper sweets (another pic of those below)

 

This is a photo of part of the flower market, that stretches for blocks.

 

 Cannabis Starter Kits are available at the flower market.

 

A café near the Red Light district, where we ordered what became our favorite Dutch treat: peppersweets! (Basically, cream or goat cheese stuffed sweet/spicy peppers)

Despite the photo with wine, we did drink beer in Amsterdam: here is a photo that another tourist took of us at a brewery.

Another picture of the brewery, Brouwerij 't IJ

 

 

 

Vondelpark 

 

 

BUT, there really are a lot of bikes in Amsterdam, and they drive fast.