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So, yes... a lot has happened since we last updated (as you might be able to tell from our title).
Berlin first...
It was good, we got an awesome (and free) walking tour of Berlin. Yay New Europe Tours! We had a hard time getting to our hostel, but eventually found it with the help of some locals. The train (public transit) system in Berlin originally seemed insane, but after a good nights rest we managed to get around fairly easy. Steven thinks it is actually one of the better designs in Europe. We visited a cool museum that had taken apart temples and city gates, like one of the city gates of Babylon, in foreign lands and reassembled them in the museum. Seeing the wall and the death strip in between was interesting. We found the concentration camp just north of town not as moving as we had expected because it was also used as a Soviet concentration camp after WWII and the audio guide wasn't very good at distinguishing between the two regimes. We probably should have gone to Dachau when we had the car, but on the other hand this showed enough torture for both of us.
We ended up spending a lot of time searching for good food that didn't exist and ended up just eating at our hostel out of lack of choices. We did, however, find a good bagel shop and had wished after we had left that we had just eaten that for dinner.
Amsterdam...
We stayed in a hostel that was near the Red Light District, which is turns out is extremely safe (one of the safest places in Europe) because of the police presence and the number of cameras in the streets. We loved Amsterdam. We walked everywhere, got wonderful food, saw cool sights, went on a tour of the Red Light District and got some good tips on food places, and it was just a really good, relaxing place to be. To answer some questions we know you have: no, we didn't smell weed all of the time and it is illegal to smoke it on the streets. Yes, prostitutes rent out window space and stand there to solicit (they are actually not allowed to go outside the door to solicit because it is illegal). No, they were not naked, in fact some were very much clothed (and some weren't that skinny either and some just looked weird). It is actually a pretty mellow place as one might expect. We also saw the Anne Frank House, the Rijksmuseum (home of the Night Watch), the Sex Museum, a Cathedral in the middle of the Red Light District, and the HomoMonument (you will have to see pictures. It is really cool). Mostly we walked around a bit and bought a bunch of souvenirs.
We also did a day drip to Brussels, mostly to visit the Chocolate Museum and buy lots of chocolate (like almost 10 lbs worth). We subsequently found that we could not mail said chocolate home from Paris (which is coming up) and so are carting about until we find a willing post office (for those of you who will be receiving said chocolate (cough, cough..Dana and others) just know the effort put into your happiness). We also saw the Peace Palace in The Hague, but wasn't that impressed (at least from the outside). Hopefully we can get back for a tour the next time we are in Holland.
Paris part duex...
Yes, although we disdain and loathe the city we returned thinking maybe our day trips wouldn't be as bad as the city itself. Oh how wrong we were... Giving Paris some credit our hotel this time around was waaayyy better because we stayed in a studio apartment type place where we got to cook all our own food. We day tripped to Chartres, a cool cathedral with a labyrinth (the meditative kind, not the minotaur kind..to the dismay of Antonia (she wanted to see the minotaur)). It was good for a free site. We didn't feel any spiritual connection to the site, but it was a cool place (except for the crazy tourists who thought it would be fine to walk into the middle of the labyrinth when people are trying to walk through it). Steven felt it was a good meditative exercise.
Our next day trip was our worst ever..in fact we are sure it is worse than the Archeology Museum in Naples and we would never recommend that anyone ever spend their money there. If you wanted to know the place you should never go to...that place would be Versailles..in particular the palace. A little disclaimer, we can't actually say that you shouldn't pay to see the gardens because we were so disgusted with the 27 Euro we shelled out to see boring French Portraits that we couldn't bring ourselves to give them more money. We are sorry to those of you who have enjoyed Versailles in the past, but it really was not our thing and we couldn't see why it cost sooo much!
Lastly, we visited Orleans, the birthplace of Joan of Arc. Unfortunately we visited on a Sunday when nothing but the church was open and three days after the Joan of Arc festival ended. We, nonetheless, enjoyed Orleans. The cathedral had awesome stained glass windows depicting the life of Joan. There was also a massive statue of her on horseback in a square. We returned to Paris and went to the movies. We saw IronMan and enjoyed it much.
PS about Paris....the cost of mass transit out of zones 1 and 2 is astronomical! We very much disliked that part.
So, on the 12th we flew from Paris to Dublin. We have now spent one day here and absolutely love it!! There are actual green spaces and we took our time site seeing today with breaks in the many parks. We can walk everywhere again and are happy about that. We are planning on staying in the Republic of Ireland until the 25th and then will head to Northern Ireland for a few days before heading to Scotland. So far in Dublin we have see Trinity College, St. Patrick's Cathedral, St. Stephen's Green, Dublin Castle, a cool interactive Viking museum, and walked about a whole bunch. We have also have yummy fish and chips and other delicious food (including actual Mexican food). We are also enjoying the cool temperatures since we were dying of heat and humidity in Paris (just one more reason we hated it there).
So, that is our long winded update. Hopefully we will be able to update more often since we have cheaper internet now. Hope all is well on the homefront. Happy Mother's Day to all! Now that we can speak English and people understand us, we can say good bye.
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Sandi
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It was nice to hear your voice on Mothers Day Antonia. Your call meant the world to me!...I miss you bunches! While in the UK ....try some Shepards Pie in a local Pub...my experience with it was YUMMY!