I can ride my bike with no handle bars… except in the Netherlands

Bikes are everywhere in Groningen –

And by everywhere, I mean, even IKEA has bike parking.  I wanted to say, “how the heck to you get out of an IKEA shopping trip on just a BIKE,” but then, we did.

Proof:

Sometimes the bikes are artistically parked, like the first picture in this post, and others are just the perfect color –

Or have cute names –

Some are bought, then stolen (like our bike was three weeks in), which makes some residents refer to it as, ‘the giant bike borrowing community in Groningen’ –  you buy a bike, which gets stolen, you buy another bike hoping it wasn’t stolen, and on and on and on.

So then you put it on your boat house to discourage that cycle –

And that is just a snapshot of life (or a handful) in the Netherlands – street bike style.