European Photos 18

A street in Zaandijk.
This is an apple tree in front of the ADM building. It is an apple tree and it is in Holland. That makes it a Dutch apple tree. I guess that's what they make Dutch apple pie from. (Man, that was a long way to go for a bad gag.)
A chocolate factory. It doesn't look like Willy Wonka's, but boy did it smell good!
It's hard to believe that one windmill powers that whole factory.
The grounds of the ZZV Zaandijk football club.
The view from the bridge crossing to Zaanse Schans.
Windmills!
Sheep! I don't know why one of them is standing in a red box.
I think people live in some of these buildings. At least it looked that way.
This is De Zoeker windmill. It was built in 1672.
De Gekroonde Poelenburg, the most colorful of the mills, was built in 1869. The De Kat windmill is behind it.
De Zoeker (oil mill), De Kat (paint mill) and De Poelenburg (wood sawing mill) all in a row. The De Kat was the only one turning.
De Huisman windmill was made out of two different mills. It is now a mustard mill.
It was sometimes difficult to get a picture of something without a bunch of Asians in the shot. I don't know how I did it, but I mostly succeeded.
Some of these buildings are little museums and some are offices. It is a working village.
I don't know the historical significance of the buildings being painted green. I'm sure there must be one.
Calm ducks moments before an Asian tourist came up with a camera and chased them away while trying to photograph them.
A man making wooden shoes. There are some of those Asian tourists.
Inside the cheese shop.
This is a shop where they sold Delftware. They make some here too.
This is a pancake restaurant where I had...
...this big apple and cinnamon Dutch pancake and a cup of coffee.
This woman was making little pewter things. She just demonstrated how she makes a spoon from the molten pewter at the lower left.
This was the train back from Zaandijk.
I just thought it was kind of funny that Cinderella in Dutch is Assepoester. Ass poster.
There's the Oude Kirk again.
In 1488 this was the main gate of the city's eastern wall. After that it was a weighing station. After that it was a prison. After that it was an operating theatre. Now it is a cafe.
Okay, I went to see a live sex show in the Theatre Casa Rosso simply so I could say I had. Let me tell you this. The show was surprisingly dull. I mean, people were actually engaging in sex acts on stage, but it was rather uninspired. I suppose it is to be expected, but still. A little enthusiasm, please.
I cropped the lower left of the previous picture because I inadvertently caught a shot of a prostitute. Your aren't really supposed to photograph the girls. In fact there are supposedly people who walk the streets who will cause trouble if you do. But this was afternoon and I was actually photographing the Casa Rosso. So this is basically what the women do. They sit or stand in the door windows in their underwear and advertise. Some knock as people pass in hopes of attracting attention.
The National Monument. Of course it is phallic too.
This freaked me out. There is a Madame Tussaud's on the Dam Square and this Benny Hill figure stands at the door. It was so realistic I actually thought for a moment that it was real, even though Benny Hill has been dead for years. And what would he be doing standing in the doorway of a wax museum in Amsterdam anyway?
The only reason I took this picture is because of all the famous people who have been on this particular company's canal boats. Their pictures are on the ironwork. Nelson Mandela, Winston Churchill, Ajax football club, the Apollo 11 astronauts and Lech Walesa to name a few.
The Mint Tower. This originally marked the edge of the walled medieval Amsterdam. The steeple was added in 1620, the same year the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth.
University of Amsterdam. One of the previous evenings I was wondering what was farther up one of the canals in the Red Light District. It didn't look too safe at night. It turns out that the university was up there.
This coffeshop was next to the laundromat. It was a little annoying walking past these places. The smell of marijuana smoke wafted out of the doors of most of them. It reminded me of the smell that floated up from beneath the east stands at Lockhart Stadium at Fort Lauderdale Strikers matches in the 70's.
As I walked past this hotel, I noticed a plaque at the entrance that said it was where trumpeter Chet Baker died. So I took a picture. It wasn't until I got back home and researched some things on the web that I found out that he died on May 13, 1988 after falling from a second story window. He had been using heroin at the time. I thought he had died in the hotel, not in front of it. So this is a picture of where he actually died on the sidewalk.

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