First Time Cycling in the Netherlands | Rotterdam Bike Ride w/ Commentary

Strava Activity:
https://www.strava.com/activities/11644173460

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Time Stamps:
Introduction – 0:00
Start of Ride – 1:06
Outro – 11:20

#netherlands #cycling #bike

hello everyone and welcome to bests side cycling we made it here to the land of bicycles I’m here in the Netherlands in the city of rdam which is the second largest next to Amsterdam and then yeah uh I’m here again with a nice donkey bike share these ones are really great and easy to use so yeah we’re going to go head out and go check out some of the infrastructure around here let’s so let’s go and ride the very first thing I wanted to check out here was uh a bike tunnel so I saw that maybe just about a short ride from here West there is a bike tunnel that maybe we could check out and I’m really curious what that’s going to be like so let’s go right over there and see but this is my very first ride and I figured it’d be a good idea to have it just completely uncut just so that for these initial sort of learning patterns uh you can sort of experience it with me cuz uh just riding in here through the bus there’s definitely was a lot of new things I haven’t seen before in terms of just how the traffic pattern is work and all so hopefully I won’t mess it up too much make a right here and I guess this is how they denote the space for bikes but yeah it’s a really signature red that we’ll see all over uh in the spaces where it is dedicated bike infrastructure as well so it’s not only in America where cars get blocked or we get blocked in yeah so this is my first Dutch intersection we come into here protected we get a signal and we can just keep on going so I guess if I want to make a left then I just keep going like this still signal yeah fast sort of similar to that Seattle one but different the main key difference though that you’ll notice right away is that they do allow mopeds and those type of motorbikes onto these bike Lanes so honestly that takes away from it a lot at least was initially jarring but otherwise yeah I think we are now part of uh the Netherlands traffic here in the bike in the bike lane and we’re going to ride on sort of this straight away for a good while until we turn in to try to find that tunnel that’s interesting so it’s about 4:15 right now so I don’t know if I’m entering into uh Peak traffic yet but it looks like it might be given how many people are here and uh yeah you can see people trying and navigate this bit of empty space as it’s just sort of a a junction with two sides and we follow this uh this whole train along taking okay yeah so there’s whole sideways thing going on here another green light for us to go and this is where really what I call defensive riding matters the most I think uh just having just all sorts of people on bikes means you’ll get all different types of behaviors I’ve seen when I was just observing people I saw like maybe like 30% of them like the signal but it’s definitely not a ubiquitous thing um but yeah but the Dutch bike definitely is super common I see everyone with these sweat back handlebars so it’s interesting thing you know like it’s pretty ironic though if I have to say I don’t know if this is a hot take but like I know European ebikes are heavily regulated but I’m not sure how that translates here to all the other type of bikes they put on the trails [Music] and it’s a go I like how they had two signals there was one that was higher up and then there’s even like a mini one down below here you can see to the right I found that pretty interesting why they would have that that’s an interesting way to ride the bike and I mean this is pretty easy it’s basically I mean you still have to walk off a driveway ways I guess but this is basically like all the cycle track I’ve used to using in Hong Kong but like way better because it’s wider and actually like Smooth so you don’t have to like handle curvs every other and you get a signal at every every intersection so it’s almost like layered of uh of of of Road basically like there’s the car Lanes there then the bike Lanes here but even walking around I noticed like sometimes the pedestrians space face ends up being quite cramped because of that but you see here there another [Music] intersection I might have been in the wrong there I blocking them turning left um probably whoops but that’s the that’s the hard part I guess is like every signal at one Junction there’s going be people w’t go left people W go straight so uh as I just said this is my very first time riding here so I’m figuring it out on the Fly and uh I don’t think it’s rocket science but I think once you really try to immerse yourself and uh just follow the flow uh you have a much better time and a much safer time I am not wearing a helmet today uh to follow the the common patterns definitely took a lot in me to do that cuz I’m a total helmet type of guy but yeah let’s see not this intersection at the next one we’re making a left but yeah this is easy easy easy peasy except for just random cyclist starting in every now and then but in terms of routing and of just following these roads yeah I’m still seeing all the mopets right now sort of I mean in time on they have mopeds everywhere so like you’re riding with them next time but you’re like on the road and there’s like a way more open space so like in that way it feels a little bit more comfortable to let them like weave around you versus here it is that a little bit more cramped so here I’m going to make a left I’m going to look that there’s no traffic so there’s traffic going across me so I guess I wait for them makes sense and make a left and then signal again is green here and I guess it’s just it’s just that easy per se yeah so I could see how people were uh complaining about the the Seattle protected indust section it’s definitely got its differences um can’t list them all technically right now but just the riding experience there with how the signals worked I was able to do the straight and left and know one one one signal but yeah these the famous red painted roads of viery so here we should start seeing the uh Mass tunnel up or Tower not tunnel Tower up ahead but also the mass tunnel entrance and hopefully I was hoping we can go check it out the one issue is I might be on the the wrong side of it but we’ll see we’ll just keep riding but yeah there’s the tower that I was talking about earlier it’s been a short ride but still nice but yeah out of all the cities I’ve rid in I’d say probably I was been I’ve been to Frankfurt uh Brussels gent and here probably gent was the closest to having this type of infrastructure Frankfurt definitely had more Brussels was just sort of like I think I know it’s an oldest city but I think it just had like some provisions on top of what they had but nothing nothing like this well D in Brussels is probably closer to what you sort of see in America with like just painted bik lanes and stuff like that but um we made it here to the tower but we need to go further on to go to the tunnel so this is probably a nice tourist attraction and yeah I managed to make it through my first few Dutch intersections without uh without herting anybody that’s good I guess they have those you see those little green boxes on the ground it was like to Mark the utilities I think again all right and we’re now in some nice wooded area so that’s a cool change already and there’s a lot of Asian stuff sorry there’s like this whole building next to the water serving dimsum and uh ethnic food yeah that that’s true out of all things I’ve been so far this definitely uh right d has the most Asian population for sure and food so that is really easy for me to come in here diet wise and all that but the hard part is definitely in terms of uh the cost the cost here is a little higher than the other cities but we made it that is the uh tunnel station so let’s just go right up to it and uh check it out which will be in my next video so definitely roll over like button subscribe so you don’t miss it uh during this trip you’ll expect to see a mix of these simple ride Vlogs and just for me to make point out things that I find super interesting so I’ll see you all in the next video