I have been biking to school and taking a trip on most weekends since I bought my bike. There are bike paths along the river and beside some major roads, but where I bike to school does not always have that. It can be a little dicey but riding with others brings safety in numbers. It is actually tougher to get around the other bikers and pedestrians as it seems that anything goes with them and they don’t follow any rule.
Here are a few images from the bike rides. Exercise classes (usually Qi Gong) and dancing you can see in the parks and under the bridges.
To get on the bridges you need to sometime take stairs. They have a ramp on part of the stairs where you push your bike up as you walk. Sometimes it is in the middle and others it is on both sides. Here you can see the not very wide ramp along the side. It actually is pretty ingenous, does not take much space, and is efficient. You can see the ramps both on the left and the right.
Since I bought my bike I also had them put on a rack over the rear tire and bought one pannier messenger bag that can clip to the side or be tied down on top which gives me better options than to put everything in a backpack on my back. It was incredibly cheap with both costing a total of $40 USD.