Amsterdam bike tours
 

We'll be visiting Amsterdam for the very first time next month and our guidebook gives two companies that do these tours: Mike's Bike Tours and Yellow Bike Tours.

Mike's looks very interesting, with a four-hour tour of the centre and the countryside. However, I'm intrigued by the description under Yellow, which says "these tours are a little less youth-oriented than Mike's and are limited to 12 participants per guide".

Has anyone done a tour with either of these companies? I'd be interested in hearing about your experiences, like whether it was worth it, whether the guides were knowledgeable, how many people were in the group, etc.

Thanks!

ttt

Well, Mike's is the original name of the tour company in Paris that is now called Fat Tire Bike Tour. EVERYONE has raved about how great that company is - including me. So....when I'm in Amsterdam, I'm taking Mike's tour.

My family did a Mike's Bike Tour in Munich (their original city) several years ago. It was a lot of fun and certainly not strenuous, however, the guide's commentary was definitely geared towards a high school/college market. Some of his remarks could be offensive to a person who doesn't appreciate obscenities and lewd jokes. He was aware that our sons who were 10 and 14 years of age were listening to his every word, and he did attempt to bring it down a notch, but it still was pretty irreverent, at best.

Having said that, this spring we would have done the Amsterdam tour had the weather been more conducive!

there's a lot of good links for Amsterdam here
http://p104.ezboard.com/feuropetogof...picID=31.topic
this one seems especially good
http://homepages.cwi.nl/~steven/amsterdam.html

Thanks starrsville and padbrasher. Sounds like Mike's has a good thing going on in Europe! The bike tour has officially been added to my to-do list :)

Realshalott, thanks for the links. I'll definitely check them out.

Please post a report when you return!

Keith

Will do, Keith! It'll be nice to return the favour to everyone who helped me during planning :)

We've done both: Fat Tire in Paris and Yellow Bike in Amsterdam. The Paris tour was fun--mostly young people--but I have to say that the Yellow Bike tour in Amsterdam was one of the best memories of our trip (two weeks in Paris, Amsterdam, and Bruges). We took the day tour that goes outside the city to the countryside: dykes, small villages and harbors, lunch in a tiny pancake house. There were six of us plus our guide (we ranged from late 20s to late 40s). Our guide was phenomenal--he knew so much Dutch history and really taught us a lot about what we were seeing and experiencing. Very highly recommended!

Thanks for sharing your experience, strass. The one thing that makes me want to go more with Mike's is the duration of the tour. We'll have 3 full days in Amsterdam, plus an evening and a morning. I'm wary of using up one day just for the Yellow Bike Tour. If we were staying a week, I'd definitely consider it. I also like the fact that Mike's combines the city and the country.

I'll keep it in mind for next time we go back!

That's definitely a good point... it did use up about seven hours of a day. I have to admit that we were a bit leery of biking in the city, so we were excited to be in the country!

I think you'll be happy with Fat Tire, too. Have fun!