Holland Windmills

I found shakers! The 'XXX' doesn't stand for what you might think, especially in Amsterdam. It stands for: X - Heroic, X - Determined, X - Merciful. And they use the three St. Andrew's crosses because he is the patron saint of fisherman.
Here is the triple decker bike parking deck next to the Central Station. Can you say there are a lot of bikes here? They also pull hundreds of bikes out of the canals because people who don't lock their bikes properly could get the bikes thrown over by a passerby.
You can see a few of the modern windmills while on the way out to see the older ones.
Yesterday Becky and I rode out to Zaanse Schans where 11 out of thousands of windmills still stand. Back in the day on the Zaan River, you would see these windmills practically stacked on top of each other harnessing the wind. There were many uses of the windmills, but unfortunately they didn't have a guided tour to tell us all about it. I was able to figure out how some of the internal parts worked together, which was very cool considering that these are ALL wooden structures. Even the "nails" were quarter diameter size pegs made of wood. But this was one of the main reasons I wanted to come to Holland, so I can check that off the list!

Mrs. Becky Grant! And, some old windmill.

Old Brian, and a windmill!

Becky was told that this statue originally held a shovel in his hand, but I'm not sure how you hold a shovel when you're hands are going in different directions! I, on the other hand, found the heavy lifting fairly easy!
Here you can see our buddy TomTom lodged in between the handlebars and the bag. This picture was taken on the ferry coming back from the windmills. Unfortunately, ole' Tommy Boy doesn't know that there are not bike paths on all of the roads it directs us on. So we had to improvise a little, but in the end he redeems himself! I think I will send in a recommendation to TomTom to add these Regional & National bike routes to their maps. I know that all of the countries I am going to have these routes on paper maps, so it would seem they could add them as well.
After a late dinner we past this sign for directions to the bike locker at the Leidse Plein. Jeff and Becky doing their best Wheel of Fortune impression!

So far today we have done some shopping and walking around, now we're just watching Le Tour. Jeff is out on a 6 hour ride through the country with maps and a train ticket to get back! We are going to 'mebike', an artsy cycling exhibit. They will show inovations in art with bicycles and also live music, videos and other attractions for 3 days. So we'll head down there later and check it out. Tomorrow I head for Dusseldorf, Germany to begin my ride along the Rhine. Check out some of the older posts, I have added pictures that I downloaded from the past week. Thanks for the comments from everyone! Cheers!