Dutch Adventure: Week Two, Part 1

Week Two of our Dutch Adventure

Monday 20 August 2018 – Let’s go rent bicycles!

You can generally find places to rent a bicycle for the day, for about €10 per day, in most cities (just try a Google search for any Dutch city). Finding places to rent or lease them for longer is a less easy search, but Billy found a place in Leiden, which is a city about 2 hours away by mass transit. It would have been a little shorter but there was construction on one of the rails along our journey, so what would have been probably 15 minutes of the trip from Ede to Utrecht by train turned into a transfer onto a bus and an additional 45 minutes.

So at the beginning of our journey, we walked to the train station in Arnhem, took the train to Ede, bus to Utrecht, then train to Leiden, then a short bus, hopped off one stop late (oops*) and walked around the corner to the bike rental place. *Side note: there are pretty canals in Leiden, and we were distracted. I’m ok with this.

The bicycle rental place rented by the day, and I think they also rented parking with a free shuttle to elsewhere in the city. One thing I’ve noticed about living in the Netherlands is that the further west you go (closer to the water), the busier and more touristy it gets. It definitely felt like there was a lot of tourist trade happening at this shop. There were two little buildings, one with bicycle rental happening, and the other reminded me of the ice cream/soda/snack shops you see in tourist areas, like Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.

Thankfully, we knew that they “lease” bicycles by the month, and the fellow working there knew what we meant. They had a small selection of bicycles for leasing, with two that fit my smaller stature. The guy working there kept trying to encourage me to take the one where you backpedal to brake, but I really don’t like that kind, so I took an orange, rusty looking one. A friend of mine had told me that renting or buying an older looking bike is fine as they’re less likely to get stolen, so I feel I fit right in with this one.

We finished our transactions and rode the bicycles back to the Leiden train station. Now came the next unknown or “path not yet taken” part. I had been doing some research on the way there about how to take bikes on the train – and what to do about the part of our journey that was now via bus due to the construction. We’ve noticed that unlike the US, the buses and trolleys do not have bike racks on the front. It looks like people take one or the other, but not a combination of the two.

In the research, I found that you buy a one-day train pass for the bicycle for €6.20 or about $7.25. So we knew we needed the bike passes, and it appeared that we couldn’t take the bikes on the bus. We rerouted our return trip so that instead of Leiden-Utrecht-Arnhem, we took the train from Utrecht to Den Bosch and back up to Arnhem, so that we were on trains all the way back, and would just have to ride home from the train station, about 1.5 kilometers (or just under a mile).

On the doors of the train are symbols, like a wheelchair or bicycle, to indicate areas that have accommodations for these items. The bicycle area is in the connecting area between cars, and it seems to often be at the end of the train (most out of the way, I figure).

Here’s an image of the cut in area for bicycles with a partially folded bicycle (there is such a thing as folding bicycles):  https://ilovebikingsf.com/2015/01/19/traveling-to-the-netherlands-with-a-brompton/).

The trains from Leiden and Utrecht, I think we got it right. Then we kind of messed up. We had about 10-15 minutes between trains in Den Bosch, so I watched the bikes while Billy ran up to the main station area to get fries (with mayonnaise, yes please), and he got back to me and the bikes right as the train was pulling up and people were boarding.

I thought we were going to miss it, so I directed us to the first doorway I could find that looked empty. We were not about it miss it, so we were in the way of the other passengers getting on and going into the adjoining car. We nibbled on our fries with embarrassment (at least I did).

We decided to take a risk, so at a major stop, we jumped out, fries in hand, scrunched up against the bike handle, and ran to the end of the train, and got back in at the right spot without missing the train. Whew!

There was a pair of lovebirds sitting in the fold down seats in the bike area, so I nestled my bike in with them, and when they didn’t move (I’m not blunt-Dutch enough yet), Billy put his bike on the other side of the car where the conductor would come out in an emergency. Thankfully there was no emergency, so we didn’t get in trouble for it. 🙂 We managed to finish our fries as well.

We arrived at the Arnhem station without further incident and bicycled home.

I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it, but Arnhem is a bit hilly – more so than most of the flat, flat Netherlands – so I probably walked my bike home part of the way.

We actually talked to a few bike sellers in Arnhem before heading out to rent the bikes, and they tend to mention that we will probably want bikes with gears here because of the hills. Many people in the Netherlands can get away with “oma fiets” which is basically the grandma bicycle, and it has no gears and the back pedal brake. Since we’re in hilly, hilly Arnhem, I’m glad I got my rusty orange bike in Leiden with its 3 gears and hand brakes.

So what did we learn?

• Plan extra time for travel, just in case.
• Look at the travel board so you know when the train is *actually* leaving.
• Look for the symbols on the train as it’s arriving so you know where you’re heading.
• Stretch more before riding a bicycle for the first time.
• Take more pictures to share on the blog. 🙂
• Plan for a sore butt when you first start riding. 😉