Family Quickly Forgets Dream of Leisurely Amsterdam Bike Ride Amid Bicycle Apocalypse

KEY POINTS

•Alesandra Dubin visited Amsterdam with her husband and 11-year-old twins, expecting peaceful bike rides but found bike mayhem instead.
•Their family relied on punctual trams and buses, but caught gridlock when leaving, forcing a mid-ride Uber bailout and ultimately missing their train.
•For her twins' birthday dinner, the family enjoyed rijsttafel, an Indonesian feast reflecting the Netherlands' long colonial history, making their trip culturally layered.

Alesandra Dubin and her husband took their 11-year-old twins to Amsterdam, expecting quaint canals and tulips but got biking chaos instead. The city boasts more bikes than people, with tiny kids multitasking text and handlebar seats simultaneously, who seem to treat red lights as mere suggestions. They replaced their 'leisurely family ride' dream with frantic cross-street dodging. Public transit dazzled with its punctuality and dedicated lanes—for instance, their Uber was a traffic nightmare, forcing a luggage-laden bus jump that caused their train to sail away without them. The birthday dinner featured 'rijsttafel,' an Indonesian feast reflecting 350 years of colonial culinary confusion, proving Amsterdam's surprises extend to your plate. Despite dodging reckless cyclists and red light rebels, the trip wrapped with surprisingly kid-friendly vibes, except for souvenir shops that make parents nervously side-eye street art.