Relaxing day

We woke up late despite going to bed early, just the clock confusion thing. It's hard to claim we did much today, but it sure was a good time. Went to the Rijksmuseum for a few hours, will hit up the Van Gogh one later in our trip. Van Gogh's stuff is a little more accessible to me than the other period works, although they're all cool. So is the free hot chocolate outside.

Watched a packed skating rink but didn't join the melee, played around on a bike skateboard ramp without a skateboard, went for coffee in Vondelpark, window shopped, drank more coffee, etc.

Tori said she likes seeing all the women riding bikes in nylons and high heels. Although we might be approaching this from different angles, I'm glad we agree on something. Among many other neat-o people watching moments, we saw a family of 5 on two bikes, dad had two kids in a low bucket thing on both sides of front wheel and one on a seat over back wheel, mom just had the one on back. Rather impressive over minivans and SUVs. Nobody wears helmets, I'd suspect the crash rate is low - the cars know there's more bikes than cars, the bikes have their own lanes, and they have way more roads to go on anyway since many of the streets are too small for cars. People don't go too fast on those bikes either.

We watched a little Chinese kid (they seem to spell it Chinees I think here, rather phonetic if I'm remebering the restaurant signs right) playing an old guy at chess on a life size chess board in a square. Fun to watch for a while.

After that Tori got her first ginger coffee while we took a relaxing break from our tough day of walking around and relaxing.

The plethora of city bikes is cool, lots of them have crappy sounding gears. This seems like an ideal place for that NuVinci friction fluid internal "geared" without gears hub to catch on. The bikes are utilitarian, which is fine - they don't need to be blingy - but they all seem to crummily maintained. Too many flats or underinflated tires. Too much squeak and rattle. Like, even if it's "just" a utility bike, I'd tighten up those rack bolts, throw some lube on the chain, and pump up my tires.