NETHERLANDS: Bicycles

When we arrived in The Hague one of the first things I noticed was all the bicycles.

Everywhere.

Dutch people love their bikes. 

People of all ages ride them. 

Everywhere. 

Commuting to work in dress clothes, going for groceries, taking the kids to school, and basically getting from point A to point B.

Bicycles are parked everywhere. 

I figured if you weren't careful it would be so easy to loose your bike among all the other bikes.

There are HUGE parking spots for bikes, especially by the train stations. Utrecht has the largest bike parking facility by their train station with parking for 12,500 bikes!

At first I felt a bit nervous walking in the downtown core with mixed pedestrian, bike, tram and car areas all together. The bikes move quickly and they feel they have the right of way.

It can literally seem like a dangerous mayhem with no rhyme or reason.

There are dedicated bike paths and directions on all the major roads. 

We are very fortunate that we have bikes where we are staying and we love using them. It makes it so quick and easy to get places when you can just hop on a bike.

We feel very local riding our bikes to most places.

We felt even more local when we came back to where we parked our bikes by the train station and our bikes were GONE! 

GONE! 

GASP!

Despite what appears to be people parking their bikes seemingly everywhere, it turns out there are legal spots to park your bike, illegal spots to park your bike, and, some places that are VERY illegal to park! 

It also turns out there is a very organized system for both picking up illegally parked bikes, and for quickly claiming bikes that have been picked by the "bike parking authority" or as I call them, "the bike catchers". 

Which tells me that it must happen a lot. 

Less than 24 hours, a fine of 25 euros, a tram ride and a walk to the well-organized bike depot, we were happily reunited with our errant bikes.

Coincidentally, the next day, after making sure my bike was parked in a totally legitimate spot, I saw the "bike catchers" hard at work sawing chains off bikes and loading them onto their truck. 

I can imagine they are not very popular.

LESSON LEARNED: 

Just because other bikes are parked in a convenient spot, it does not mean that it is a legal spot and safe from the "bicycle catchers".