Berlin day 2: slowing down

We've been gone a total of nine days, and tonight our pace of walking 5-12 miles a day and not sleeping well finally caught up with us; Patrick's sleepiness morphed into a bit of the flu. We leave for Leipzig tomorrow, but will be cramming in less than planned and slowing things down until Patrick is feeling better.

For most of today, however, we fit in one of Patrick's favorite days: zoo day! The Berlin zoo is beautiful and huge, with some of the best laid out exhibits we've seen at zoos. It's full of huge old trees (one of which randomly fell right behind us as we were walking)! It was also within a huge, beautiful park, which we very much enjoyed walking through (although we were definitely surprised when we accidentally wandered through a part of the park that was apparently adopted by nudists...).

Berlin: Museum Day

I do believe that this is the first post I've written while partway under the table - but free wifi is surprisingly hard to come by in Berlin, and the bar we're in offers it!

We arrived in Berlin late last night to a long, long walk to our hotel - but since we spent most of the walk in the dark looking at things that we were excited to learn more about in the morning, it was a quick and fun jaunt. Once we arrived I had a wake-up call about how old I'm getting: we received a room upgrade from a basic room to a beautiful suite, and I was (and still am) absolutely beside myself because we get a washer and dryer!!! We now officially only have to live for 3 weeks with laundry done only in the sink! Oh - and we have a beautiful suite with a living room, balcony and the most comfortable bed we've slept in yet here. I like that, too.

After sleeping far too late because of the wonderful bed and enjoying some wonderful German breakfast/lunch, we took off for Museum Island to start our explorations. Most of the museums in Berlin are on a small island in the middle of the river, connected by bridges. This turned out to be our most museum-focused day so far, as we toured the Berlin Cathedral, Neus Museum and Pergamon Museum. (Spelling might be off here - I'm on vacation!)

The Berlin Cathedral was lovely - beautiful architecture and decoration, but the real selling point was the view of Berlin from the top of the dome. For a last minute addition to our plans, I'm certainly glad we did this!

The Neus Museum, while we went believing it was solely Egyptology, is in fact a huge museum filled with very early history items. Egypt is a large amount of the museum, but there were also many rooms full of artifacts from other cultures.

The Pergamon Museum was an interesting and strange place. There was a VERY long line to get in, and the museum inside was less than half built. Many exhibits were missing or incomplete, and only half the building was even accessible. After a lot of walking both to Museum and inside the museums themselves, we finished up our first night in Germany enjoying happy hour with German beer/wine and dinner in a fantastic German beer hall, where Patrick assured me that their beer was every bit as good as the amazing food.

Oktoberfest in Munich

Dear friends,

One day you may come to Munich for Oktoberfest (unless you are claustrophobic; then I would not recommend it). It is a lot of fun and you will probably have a wonderful time and meet some amazing people from all over the world. It is absolutely worth the trip.

But do not try to keep up with the Scots in beer drinking. No matter how much fun it may be, you will regret your decision soon.

Other than those poor decisions, all is well and we will try to post photos soon! Guten nicht, all!

Our "Layover" in Amsterdam

At least, it sure felt like a layover! We added Amsterdam to the itinerary on a whim to break up the distance between Paris and Berlin, which we otherwise wouldn't have seen. Neither of us knew much about the city, although we'd been told it was a great place to visit.

After Paris, Amsterdam was a great breath of fresh air (figuratively and - mostly - literally; at least the smells here were different and less frequent). The city itself is clean, unique and beautiful; in addition to the canals, the streets are wide and everywhere we saw was lined with greenery. I wasn't prepared for the hordes of bikers, either: this is the only city I've ever seen with a multi-story parking ramp solely for bicycles. All in all, the city and everyone we've met have been very friendly and welcoming.

We spent most of our time here exploring the city streets and overlooking the canals. There's some fantastic people watching here if you camp out at a cafe, and our hotel was in a perfect location to do just that. I would love to come back here one day to do some more in depth exploring. We ended up here, entirely by accident, the day before "Monument Days," a festival when all historic monuments and most museums are open to the public for free. We thought this was going to be a great opportunity for us, but in fact it just meant that when we went out to go sightseeing this morning, the streets outside our hotel's quiet little neighborhood were packed with so many people it was hard to move. All in all this has been one of my favorite cities that we've visited so far, for all that we didn't end up doing much sightseeing, and as our train leaves for Berlin I'm a little sad to see the canals fading off behind us.

Versailles our last day in Paris

Although the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre and Notre Dame were nice, it was really Versailles that interested me most about Paris. It's a little ways out of the city (about an hour on the train, and a very welcome hour of sitting after the 12 or so miles we walked both in our first day in Paris and our day in Versailles) but well worth the trip.

In fact, there's not a lot to SAY about Versailles besides that its very beautiful and remarkably huge - its the photos that are the important part, so enjoy!

Otherwise, this was our last night in Paris before a very early train out. While I'm glad we came, I can't say that I'll be terribly sorry to leave. A lot of the stereotypes about Paris have seemed to be true in our short time here: the city in places is incredibly beautiful, but in other places is horribly dirty and smells like smoke and pee. Some people have been very friendly and exuded the "joie de vivre" that I've heard mentioned so much about France, while others were stereotypically rude and angry. It was a fun city to visit, but all in all I think we are ready to move on.

Day 1 in Paris: the Highlights

We have 2 days in Paris (upped from our original plan of 1), with the second day planned for touring the palace and grounds of Versailles, a little ways outside of Paris itself. Day one was set to be our tour of the "must see" items in the city itself,  and we didn't do too bad! The only recommendation that we missed out on was going to the top (of the Eiffel Tower, Arc De Triumph, OR Notre Dame!), either due to the VERY long lines or the amount of time we spent instead drinking wine and eating one of the most amazing lunches I've had in quite some time. (Worth it.)

We thankfully took a cab TO the Eiffel Tower, and planned to walk our way back to the hotel from there while seeing everything on our list. (Thank goodness.  If we'd tried to walk both ways, I'm not sure I'd be making it to the next city! ) From there we walked by the palace and the Arc De Triumph, and then down the famous Champs De Elysees. (It doesn't look too different from any other fancy shopping district, although the park at the end of it is nice.) We finished off our daylight hours by walking over to Notre Dame and exploring the indoors, although the towers has closed early and so we didn't make it up.

After a "quick" dinner in a sidewalk cafe, we headed over for the last few hours that the Louvre was open. This seemed to be a great way to see the Louvre; the line was short, the crowds were small and since we've been moving quickly through museums anyway so we don't end up "museum'd out" before the end of our trip. The building itself is huge and beautiful; I think we found ourselves admiring the architecture as often as the art itself.

London in Not Quite 24 Hours

We weren't sure whether we would be stopping in London when we planned this trip, since I had been there before and Patrick was more interested in other places. Once Scotland and Paris were both on our itinerary, however, it seemed silly to leave it out. The compromise was that we arrived on Monday night at about 6:15 and left the next day at 6 pm.

In London, we did achieve our goal of a whirlwind tour (maybe a bit more whirlwind than we planned at the end)! The first night after we checked in, we decided to challenge the stereotype that it's hard to find good food in the UK with an Indian restaurant, and most definitely succeeded.  Rather than going back to the hotel and to bed, we followed it up with a walk to see Big Ben, Westminster Abbey and the Houses of Parliament at night. (While they are impressive during the day, I think that Big Ben for sure is far more memorable at night. Although it always makes me think of Peter Pan.) After a much longer walk than planned along the River Thames (my directional sense has not improved since my last time in London and giving Patrick shiny things to take photos of doesn't help his), we finally found our way back to our hotel for the night. The next morning was a quick start with pastries and coffee and what we intended to be a quick, hour or so expedition to the British Museum. We ended up there for closer to 4 hours, so our next stops at the Tower of London and Tower Bridge, Buckingham Palace and the long walks in between were necessarily quick walk-bys.

While we didn't investigate anything except the British Museum in any depth, we did both enjoy ourselves and got a great overview of the city!