There and back again: Venice of the north to Venice, Italy

Bikes on the bridge - across the canal from Anne Frank House

Amsterdam Centraal Station

The only photo that turned out from our canal cruise -from this vantage you can see 7 bridges.

Amsterdam, with a population of 800,000 people, boasts somewhere in the neighbourhood of 500,000 bikes. The main roads all have 3 lanes in each direction: bike lane, vehicle lane and then transit lane. All the lanes are separated by a small curbed section; when crossing the road, each section gets the 'walk'signal at different stages, so you might be halfway across the road when the light changes and you have to stop. The first few times we crossed the road, we forgot to (or, rather, were unaware of the need to) check the bike lane - we didn't really have a near miss, but the bikes surprised us several times. Vancouver could take a few lessons from Amsterdam. While there is car traffic, it seemed lighter than Vancouver's. Granted, it's a smaller town, but the options for cycling are just so available and it's part of the mindset to bike. A man sitting next to us on the plane over told us that the city of Amsterdam spent something like $5,000,000.00 for bikes for the city. These bikes are placed all over the city for anyone to use at any time. If you come out of the grocery store and the bike you had been using is gone, you simply take another one! We hardly saw any helmets at all, and we saw a man pedalling a large trike with a huge wooden box attached to the front - where his children were sitting.
The weather while we were there wasn't the greatest - there was rain and even lightning and thunder one night. We were lucky that the morning we went touring about was very sunny, and we only had to dodge raindrops briefly.

And so, on to Venice. Stewart is very tired -waking up in the middle of the night and not able to get back to sleep, but also he doesn't have much stamina for walking! Actually, I shouldn't say that as he has done very well, but it has been a struggle. We have found the hotel and then been down to the Piazza San Marco after a light supper. (Light in calories and content - heavy in monetary value!!!) We purchased a three day vaporetto pass and have been using that to move about - it is convenient, but wow are there a lot of passengers. You rarely get a seat. Most of the following were taken from the canal on the vaporetto.