July 6, 2016 - Berlin City Circle Tour & Lowenbrau

This morning after a wonderful breakfast at the hotel we headed out for the City Circle Tour that I had booked online before coming.  There was a pick-up point just down the street from the hotel by Checkpoint Charlie.

Because of all of the bombing that has happened here there are not very many old buildings here.

The Deutscher Bundestag, German Parliament, is in the Reichstag building.

 This is the Berlin Hauptbanhof which is the  train station that we came into yesterday.

Bellevue Palace which is the official residence of the President of Germany

The TV tower (Fernschtur) is a site to behold.  You can eat in the revolving restaurant.

The Rotes Rathaus (Red City Hall) is the town hall of Berlin.

The Gendarmenmarkt the closest church is the Französischer Dom (French Cathedral).  You can climb the circular staircase all the way to the dome.  The further church is Deutscher Dom or Neue Kirche (German Cathedral) is a rebuild of the one that was bombed flat in the war.  

 As we had passed this Löwenbräu Restaurant this morning Roger said that he wanted to eat dinner here.

 What's on the menu tonight?

 We kind of got worried about what we would actually get to eat for dinner when his beer came and that was not the one he ordered.

 We worried about nothing his halbe haxe gegrillte schweinshaxe (half knuckle pork knuckle) came just right.

The round ball on the plate is a potato dumpling.

 I ordered the Ochsenbraten (roast beef), which hit the spot.  I even liked the hearty cabbage with apple (I can't even attempt to type the German name for that).

 I can't even imagine what the traffic rules are now.  It is crazy how they drive in this city.  There are no stop signs that we have seen and only traffic lights are minimal. We heard lots of horns honking today.

 On our way back to the hotel after dinner we took advantage of the actors being gone so that we could take our pictures in front of the reproduced Checkpoint Charlie.

July 5, 2016 - Berlin Here We Come

We were off even earlier than we planned.  We left the hotel at 6:30 and arrived at the train station at 7:00 am.

We picked up some breakfast and lunch at the store in the train station.  We went ahead and caught the earlier train to Amersfoort since it was there when we walked up.

It is almost time to board the train.  I have to say that this is our first trip to Europe that we have had trains be late and they have been late a few times.  I have read that they are doing a lot of work on them so that could be the cause for delays.

We are definitely not traveling first class this time.  But we did bring our lunch.

We are staying at the Angleterre Hotel this week.  Nothing special about this room but at least it has an elevator since we are on the 7th floor.

The hotel is right by Checkpoint Charlie.

Of course there has to be a McDonald's next to the US Army Checkpoint.  There is a KFC just around the corner too.

My first meal in Germany had to be German street food.

July 4, 2016 - Mauritshuis & Vredespaleis

This morning I talked Roger in going a different way into town.  This made him a little nervous but it all worked out.

He even had a chance to get a work out in.

And some different things to take a picture of.

I loved this little area that was nothing but a bunch of potted  tropical plants but in the center they had some beach chairs and mats.  I guess it was so that you could pretend you were on some tropical island.  With the beautiful sunshine we had today it could probably actually feel that way.

Then we came across this.  I am not sure what to make of this.

Is this suposed to be art?  Or is it a game?  I don't know.  I do know that if you could not get a regular size basketball through the hoop(s).

I don't know what to say about this but I just thought it was interesting.

We saw some big carp 

and even some turtles

in the pond by the Mauritshuis Museum.

Today (Monday) the Mauritshuis didn't open until 1:00.

We headed up to the third floor first so that we could see the Girl with a Peral Earing first.

This picture has a sad story but I rather look at it as a sweet girl sleeping in her bed.

I really liked this picture also of the boy that is playing with a bubble.

This is another painting that really caught my eye.

I am in total awe of the skill that it would take to paint all of the paintings in this painting.

I also like this picture of baby Jesus kissing his mommy.  I am not really sure what the symbolism is of her holding what looks like cherries the way that she is.

I think that I just liked all of the colors in this one.

As usual I was done with looking at all of the paintings much quicker than Roger so I found a comfy place to sit and wait.  When he was finally done and we walked down I made the mistake of finding an exhibit that we could visit.  When we walked in and I saw that it was just the backs of paintings and my handset with headphones that I could not get to stay on my ears and you would have to see the paintings on the handset I walked out and told Roger I would be down at the bottom when he finished.  Well I ended up in the gift shop  and bought a few things.  Roger came down a half hour later telling me how cool the exhibit was.  This artist made exact replicas of the back of original paintings like the Mona Lisa.  I personally do not care what the backs look like. 

When we left the museum we could not turn right but they told us to go around or we could wait there for 15 minutes.  We decided to go around but I think we found why they were blocking off the area.  They were filming some sort of musical movie.  As we were walking towards them we could hear singing and they were dancing but then the director said cut and he didn't seem real happy.  As we stood there watching for a little bit it didn't seem like they were in a hurry to start up again so we moved on.

They had some old cars parked at the end of the lane.

I was able to get Roger back to the pastry shop where he wanted to eat.  These were very good.  All I can say is that they were like pizza.  For dessert we shared a warm apple turnover.

Now that he had a full tummy it made him a little to friendly.

It also mad him a little more agreeable to get lost in the city.  As we walked around we kept finding places that we had been on the last trip here.  

I will have to look back on our pictures from here but I believe this is a redo of a previous picture.  

I thought this was a one of a kind bike until I saw another one a ways down the street.  I think it is still a cool looking bike but I am not sure how comfortable it should be.

Roger started getting a little nervous about where we were but I told him not to worry.  We are headed in the right direction.  Then we saw this monument as we looked down a side road so of course we had to go check it out.

Then we came out on another road and could see a copula that looked interesting in the skyline so we headed toward that.  We ended up at the Peace Palace or as it is known here, Vredespaleis.

We were too late to be able to go into the visitor center as it was already almost 5:00 so we just took some pictures outside.

The tree is covered with slips of paper that I am assuming are wishes for peace.

You could walk the ring around the peace flame and pray for world peace.

Well we decided we were not going to walk to the beach so we headed back to the hotel.  Tomorrow we have to start heading to the train station by 7:00 am so we need to be all packed up and ready to leave tonight.  Tomorrow we head to a new country.  Berlin, Germany here we come.