Amsterdam, the capital of the Netherlands is the country’s largest city and its financial, cultural, and creative centre. Amsterdam attracts a lot of tourists because of its beauty, the grid of lovely canals that criss-cross the city, its impressive architecture and more than 1,500 bridges.
Amsterdam is a very bike-friendly city and tourists would love to explore the place on a rented bicycle. There are separate bike lanes on most major streets. Some of the best options for renting bikes in Amsterdam include:
- Star Bikes Rental which offer Classic and solid dutch bikes for those who want to fit in with the locals. Prices: 5€ (4 hr) – 7€ (full day) – 9€ (24 hr), 2 lockers included.
- MacBike Bicycle Rental, which offer red bicycles with a MacBike sign on the front. They offer online bicycle reservations at their website.
- Orangebike, Rentals & Tours which offer 3 hr historical city tour by bike for €19.50.
- Damstraat, which offer daily to weekly rentals and also offer repairs for your bike and new and used bike sales.
The Amsterdam people follow basic norms when on bicycle. Here we offer some tips for the visitors who want to explore Amsterdam on bicycle:
- Be very careful and watch out for other cyclists.
- If not indicated otherwise by signs, the right-before-left rule applies.
- Avoid getting your tire in the tram rails. Always cross tram rails at an angle.
- A good map for cycling (routes, repairs, rentals + also public transport) is Amsterdam op de fiets (a Cito-plan). When preparing a route, there’s a digital bicycle route-planner for Amsterdam.
- Make sure to get a good lock (or two), and to use it. Amsterdam has one of the highest bicycle theft rates in the world.
- Bicycles can be taken for free on all ferries across the IJ, and on all metros and some carriages of tram 26 using the bike supplement fee (€1.50 in 2010) on the OV chipcard.