Floating Brothels
Thanks to this weekend’s Google Maps image update, we can now see the whole of the Netherlands in high-resolution. That’s everything in the whole country covered. Everything!
Including these floating brothels on the river Vecht, Utrecht.
This is the infamous ‘Zandpad’, one of the legal prostitution areas of Utrecht, where we can see a line of cars parked opposite the boats (whose owners are presumably in flagrante), several people out of their cars, and you can also see the many planks that connect the boats to the road. I’m assuming there’s one plank per lady.
There’s a ground-level picture and some further info at Wikipedia, but I’m not sure if it’s interesting or not - it’s in Dutch 
Thanks to Arjan.
The text at Wikipedia is indeed not particularly interesting. The text deals mainly with the fact that a popular recreational cycling route crosses the red-light area (which is unusual) and describes the recent provision of a separate cyclepath to facilitate cyclists needs. As you can imagine the situation used to be precarious for cyclists as the motorists heads were at 90 degrees to the steering wheel.
Interesting place near here.
HEY! What’s my husband doing there! >=[
Apparently not everything is in High-res… just what kind of top-secret installation is this?
Placemark: Google Maps / Google Earth
Marty, those are Navy buildings, Ayaan Hirsi Ali lived there for a while:
http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_Etablissement_Amsterdam
Gotta love the industrialization of sex.
/End sarcasm
Does anyone with more time on their hands than myself want to count the number of planks from end to end? Thats a lot of prostitution!!!!
RJ, apparently all military instillations are “pixelized” due to security concerns. We saw this in earlier posts.
RJ, apparently all military instillations are “pixelized†due to security concerns. We saw this in earlier posts.
Yeah. Gotta keep the Dutch military safe from all those anti-Dutchites.
Sorry, I don’t think a military base is safe because it can’t be seen from above; it’s safe because it actually has good defenses. If aerial visibility exposes a security hole, you’ve got bigger problems than map surfers on Google Maps.
Anyway, when those boats are a-rockin’, don’t come a-knockin’.
WRA - I actually counted them while I was writing the post
144.
here’s a canal overpass:
Placemark: Google Maps / Google Earth
this is so funny. i used to have p.e. on the sportsfield next to it. sometimes we had to run around the four edges of the complex, and that went like this .run..run..run..walk…run run run…walk..
around 11:30 they would open up after a hard nights work.. and all us kids would just walk past staring… ahh good times
There are some pretty cool bridges over the main canal in Utrecht.
Placemark: Google Maps / Google Earth
Placemark: Google Maps / Google Earth
And my favorite, a asymmetrical-type cable-stayed bridge: Placemark: Google Maps / Google Earth
Are these two leaning?!
Placemark: Google Maps / Google Earth
There’s only two things I hate in this world. People who are intolerant of other people’s cultures and the Dutch.
> WRA - I actually counted them while I was writing the post
> 144
Gross!