Day two of the heatwave. Day twenty of the trip. My tolerance to the heat is slowing eroding. Today we meet with Meredith Glasser an American who has been living abroad in the Netherlands for the last ten years. She is currently working for a company called People for Bikes, which focuses on bringing American professionals to the Netherlands to learn about how the mobility network works here. She assigned us with the fun task of a scavenger hunt. But this wasn’t any ordinary scavenger hunt. This required us to talk to tourists and locals alike and their experiences riding bikes. We also had to go to the three different areas of Amsterdam, City Center, Pre-War, and Post War. These three areas represented the different types of infrastructure and when they were built this also allowed to see how these changes in the urban environment affect a person’s behavior in how they choose to commute. Overall the experience once again showed to me that a bicycle network is not just creating a bike lane but creating the environment that will help cater to the person riding a bicycle. Later in the day when it was slowly creeping to 100 degrees, I thought that it would be best to venture out of the city and go to the Dutch coast, heading to bloemendaal aan zee, a long white sand beach. This is the same idea most inhabitants of Amsterdam had as well. Getting to the beach was not a problem, I took the metro to the central station where I hoped on an Inter-City Express followed by a bus that took me 400 meters away from the beach itself. The whole journey took me around 50 minutes which is a little slower then driving. My travel companions had managed to choke out the bus with sunscreen and wine. The whole trip was more of a big party then a commute. As soon as I got there I changed and got into the water. That was my golden ticket to finally feeling human again. It was so nice to wade in the Atlantic and just absorb everything going on around me as well as the experiences from this trip. Coming back to Amsterdam I was greeted once again with the intense heat and moist air. Tomorrow the group will come back together to talk with Meredith about our findings. It will be interesting to hear what everyone got themselves into. Here are some photos, enjoy.
-Chip
An old metro stop that was shut down because of noise complaints so it was transformed into a toy store. The escalator still works.
The beach on the Dutch Coast.
The “beach” in Amsterdam up the street from the hotel I am staying at.
