Utrecht by Bike

Now we're in Holland - Utrecht to be exact. Utrecht is about a 40 minute train ride south east of Amsterdam and is absolutely lovely.

We have the good fortune to be staying with the parents of our good friend Klaas in his childhood home. We have the whole of the third floor of this 1928 town house to ourselves - plus delicious meals from time to time prepared by Klaas' mother.

This past week has been spent exploring the city and experiencing ARCHITECTURE (which Jack will post more on at another time)...and riding our bikes. Not only are the Hesselinks providing us with a roof over our heads and food in our bellies - but also two fine (well, Jack would argue that his isn't so fine) Dutch city bikes, mine equipped with a child's seat on the back similar to what Samuel is used to in Seattle.

You'll notice that we aren't wearing helmets. Yes, there was a moment of hesitation there but having noticed that the roads are primarily travelled by other cyclists and that those who are in cars are used to navigating around bikes safely, I decided it was just fine...not to mention that NO ONE else wears a helmet here so we would have stuck out like an obnoxious American family. And we don't want that.

It is such a delight to ride around this city. In addition to the novelty of the wind in my hair, there is the amazing infrastructure developed for cyclists here and the amusement of watching very well dressed men and women (suits / briefcases, skirts / heels / shoulder bags) casually make their way to work on bikes. My favorite cyclists, however, have to be the mothers with one, two, sometimes three children conveyed to day care or to the park under their own pedal power. And again, most of these Mamas are very well dressed (as well as tall and blond). There are a number of ways that they do this - whether with a seat behind (like Samuel's), or both a seat behind and in front (like the one we have in Seattle), or with two behind and one in front...or with a Bakfiets (see below), that can carry a whole gaggle of children. And these kids aren't all young - we saw one mother with an 8 or 9 year old balanced on a front rack and a 6 or 7 year old balanced on the back. All with their white blond hair flowing. Very impressive.
We'll try to capture some shots of these cyclists before we leave...in the meantime, here is our local grocery store around the time when everyone is getting off of work and thinking about dinner.
And here are the cargo bikes for a local 2nd hand store in the old part of the city (right on the New Canal).
And here we are at the end of a jaunt out towards the university and back this afternoon.

And just to prove that we are diversified in our athletic pursuits - here is a shot of Jack and me engaged in a heated game of ping pong the night before we left England. (Jack won two of the three games...but I was a little tipsy. Otherwise, I would have had him!)