It wasn't until I saw the video below that I could wrap my mind around what I saw in Amsterdam: physically-separated bike lanes. Pedestrians walked next to the buildings, bikes (and in this case, bike parking) were given the next lane over, and parked cars provided the final buffer from motorized traffic. What looks like a traffic jam in the first photo is actually a line of parked cars. The bike lane is the reddish pavement next to the cars, which you can see more clearly in the second photo.
All I knew then is that bicycles rode confidently in their own lanes, and that you needed to be careful to walk on the pedestrian part of the sidewalk or risk getting struck by a bicycle! The number of bicycles blew my mind. On this (typical) street, hundreds of parked bicycles occupied the sturdy racks, and bicycles flowed in a steady stream day and night.
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