I awoke to a rainy, chilly morning after a deep sleep. The host had a Bosch induction stove and a metal Moka coffee vessel. I couldn’t figure out how to work either until I Googled them.

My three-hour bike tour of the city was scheduled for 10:00 am. Luckily, I called an Uber in time since the traffic was awful. The tour was just about to begin.

Our guide was a tall Dutchman named Jasper. Our group consisted of five Americans and two Aussies. Jasper, a guy from Cincinnati and I were the only guys. Two women from Connecticut, two from Sydney and a freshman from NYU filled out our group. Thankfully, I brought my foul weather gear so I was ready for a rainy, windy ride.

With the protected bike lanes everywhere, I never worried about cars. Jasper said there were about 3 million bikes in the city. As noticed yesterday, no one wears helmets, so neither did I. Touring the city by bike was wonderful, offering a different perspective from the previous night’s river cruise. We stopped at a cafe in beautiful Vondelpark where I had a cappuccino. The rain stopped until we jumped back on our bikes, of course. Jasper pointed out the sights, including the Anne Frank House from across a canal. There was a huge line awaiting entry. A visitor is advised to make reservations at least a month in advance. I wasn’t interested in waiting in line with tourists.

Jasper informed us that next year Amsterdam will be celebrating its 750th anniversary. I can’t imagine the crowds visiting next year.

After the tour ended, Anna, the NYU student, and I decided to grab some lunch. On the way, she mentioned that her mother was taking her to spend a week visiting an Orthodox Christian monastery in Romania in July. Her mother’s family fled the Soviet Union in 1945; her father’s from Romania. I didn’t ask about their political affiliations, although I suppose they may have been anti-Communists.

Over lunch, Anna shared her views on the students at NYU and the frustrations of Zoomer social life. She said that her fellow students are obsessed with Instagram and that she only made one friend. She claimed that half of the male students are gay and that the rest are largely incels! She’s met older guys at the bars near NYU, but they usually ghost her after a brief date. She feels that Canadians are nicer, but was frustrated when she and a friend went to Montreal and played pool with two Canadian guys who never asked how they were doing and simply smiled and left after the game. The bright spot in her life however is an Irish lad who she met in Dublin last summer. Liam wants to hang out with her in Dublin in a few months. Since she’s taking a semester off, she can travel whenever she likes. She’s really a very bright girl and I wished her well. She asked for my number and asked me to let her know whenever I’m back in New York. I haven’t been there since December 2014 and am unlikely to ever return; however, it’s always nice to meet a bright young person to enliven a random lunch!

By this time it was 2:30 and it was unlikely that I’d be able to grab a train to Haarlem and then wait for a bus to take me to my scheduled bike ride through the tulip fields. Besides, the weather was still unstable with high winds, so I decided to go for a long walk. It would have been a nice excursion in fair weather. At least I saw the thousands of tulips all around the city. To paraphrase a disgraced former US Vice President: “if you’ve seen one tulip, you’ve seen them all.”

As the pouring rain resumed, I popped into an Amstel bar for a drink and watched the pedestrians and cyclists battle the rain before calling an Uber for the ride back to my place.

I’m glad that I packed so much into my two-day stay in Amsterdam. I’m not sure I’d want to spend more time there. Although it’s a lovely and historic city, the crush of tourists is a bit much for my traveling soul. I’m looking forward to my train trip to Münster, Germany tomorrow.