Wilmington NC has a lot of those old streets, and Alexandria, VA, has a few left. The people in Wilmington who live on the cobbled streets are inordinately proud of them. When we were last there we took a horse-drawn tour of the old city, and were told that the City fathers want all the streets paved with macadam, while those who live on the cobbled streets resist such modernization.

In fact, according to the tour docent, the city has paved several of the streets only to find the macadam removed in its entirety the next morning. I took this story with a large grain of salt, but it's a good telling tale.

In years past I have bicycled through old-town Alexandria, and can assure you that cobblestones and bikes are not compatible with one another, particularly if the cobbles are damp. I seem to recall somewhat similar problems in Amsterdam, though the old streets there are smoother than those in Alexandria, which are true stones, four to ten inches in diameter, slightly rounded, and set into a substrate with lots of places for your tires to get caught and turned hither and thither. The stones in the streets in Wilmington did not appear to be as hazardous, though still it would not be a good place for anything other than one of those mountain bike abominations.

TEd