Bicycles everywhere

Many places in Amsterdam were closed on New Year's Day, so we opted to do a canal cruise. We had no idea that there were that many canals within the city.

We could see the waste mgmt workers were already out cleaning the streets of the previous night's broken champagne bottles and fireworks' leftovers.

It was a little chilly, but the canal cruise boat was nice and toasty. We passed some architecturally magnificent buildings and toured out into the harbour as well. It's a very nice way to get our bearings of the city layout and something Mark and I often do when we travel to large cities in new countries - whether it's a double-decker bus, or a river boat, it's relaxing and usually inexpensive.




But, what we should have done is rent bicycles!! The cool thing about the city is, there are cyclists everywhere!! Apparently, Amsterdam has approx just under 800,000 inhabitants and over 600,000 bicycles. The city really seems more conscious of the environment, in that sense. It doesn't matter whether young or old, dressed up in a suit and tie, or jeans...people were riding bikes. And obviously temperature doesn't change their riding habits.

The rest of the day was spent walking around some of the interesting pockets in the city and enjoying some of the best pizza (yup, good ol' Italian food in Amsterdam).

Tomorrow, Walt and Marisa are going to tour around the city some more, and Mark and I are going to get up early and take the train to Brussels in Belgium.