Amsterdam, Brussels, and crossing the road

We left Barcelona at the end of September for the Low Countries: from olives, wine, and anchovies to cold rain, beer, and moules frites. And to seeing a lot of people, only some of whom were expecting us there (Hi, Eric and Owen, if you're reading this).

This is the Theater Tuchinski, which Susan's father was appalled we'd never heard of.

We've been walking quite a lot: the Health app on my phone doesn't really seem fully trustworthy (sometimes it'll say completely different things for Susan and me, even though we've been walking together all day) but it says we're doing at least 3 miles most days, and sometimes more than double that. It's interesting, though, how different cities change how you walk. Barcelona was mostly wonderful (as long as you avoid La Rambla), with very distinct districts. El Born, the Gothic Quarter, and El Raval have small winding roads, often too small for traffic except the vehicles that come to hose the streets down at night, and excellent for wandering around. (They're also favoured by pickpockets and bag-snatchers, apparently, because it's so easy to disappear around a corner or bend.) Eixample, however, is laid out on a strict grid system, and all of the corners are cut off to make very wide intersections: this adds around 13% to the effective length of each block and makes it hard to decide when to cross the road. I'll write that up in detail sometime...

Ahem. Back to my original point: even though Barcelona's definitely not homogenous, it's a pretty good city to walk: mostly flat, and with good wide pavements. There seem to be a lot of people on electric scooters, but they're not too crazy. It's easy to stroll around while chatting to somebody. Amsterdam, on the other hand, has narrow pavements and it's much harder to cross the road. Getting across a typical junction seems to involve negotiating a bike lane, a traffic lane, two sets of tram tracks, another traffic lane, and a final bike lane, all of which may have their own independent sets of lights or work as zebra crossings (except for the bikes, which never stop for anything smaller than them). Brussels is less dangerous but quite a lot of it smells a bit.