London Cycle Hire

I'm on holiday in sunny Barcelona at the moment - they have a hire scheme too with the silly name of bicing. The bikes look a lot more like 'normal' bikes if you ignore the wheel size differences, but don't seem much lighter than the London ones.
As a tourist you need to lie and say you live in Barcelona to get access - I haven't bothered, but watching people on them they seem to have a higher top gear than the London ones. Barcelonians (?) seem to be able to get up to a decent pace on them with relative ease.

a higher top gear and more normal looking? that's just the bicing on the cake