A New Adventure...

 

...always starts with a little planning.

 

I'll bet you can guess where we are off to in a month or so....



Going to the land Downunder...

The Hub and I are on another adventure right now, this time as you can see, to Australia.  We will be gone a while, so I have left a few posts in the hopper to be delivered while I am away.

I have spent the day cleaning (I can't stand coming home to a dirty house-gotta also have clean sheets when I return!) packing (which I loathe) and charging up the camera, ipod and Kindle.  It's a long flight, after all!

I hope to have a lot of pictures and adventures to share with you when we get back!

Berlin Birthday

The Hub had to be away for my birthday...again...this year for work, so he surprised me with a trip to Berlin!

We stayed in a hotel near the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church.  This is the famous church that was half destroyed in 1943 by an Allied bombing raid. The original church spire is still intact and also the remaining first floor, with it's beautiful mosaic has been converted into a memorial center.  There is a new spire and church that is made of glass tiles-read: modern...personally, I think that the dichotomy doesn't work, but who asks?

On our first trip to Berlin, we didn't get to visit the Museum Insel (Island).  This turned out to be one of our very favorite parts of the city!

 

One of the highlights was a visit to the Pergamon Museum.  We were given the suggestion to visit it by our friends who had recently gone there and it did not disappoint.This place is seriously cool. Inside the museum we found original sized stone-by-stone reconstructed monuments from Turkey, such as the Pergamon Altar:

and The Market Gate of Miletus, both brought from Turkey:

and, the Ishtar Gate and Processional Way, from Babylon:

Very Raiders of the Lost Ark, huh?

When in Berlin, one must Currywurst...since it is the place where this late-night, after the clubs, eat so you don't get a hangover treat was invented!  We had ours with a beer under a bridge that lead to an outdoor market.

One of our stops was KaDeWe-one of the oldest and largest department stores in East Berlin.  We immediately found the food department on the top floor-decadent and deliciousness everywhere!  We stopped at the Veuve Clicquot concession and had a birthday toast!  A bit hungry after the champers, we stayed and had lunch.

We went to see Checkpoint Charlie-and ended up going into the museum there, which was pretty interesting. It was originally started by a man who opened it in a house right next to the guard station, and it has grown into the adjacent buildings.  Notice if you will, the view from above, taken in the museum-there is a McDonald's just behind the guard station-ugh.  Can't we Americans share better parts of our culture than Mickey D's?

 Check out the line for the Reichstag...holy mackeral!  We didn't go in because we didn't want to wait in it.  Since it was our 2nd time to visit it, we were okay with that!  

Ich bin ein Berliner!

"Please Note..." .dogs are okay, no ball playing, no bike riding, but hooray for pretzels!

The Berlin Wall was erected in 1961...and split the city of Berlin into halves...on one side, East Berlin was occupied by the Communist Regime.  One the other side, West Berlin was carved into pie pieces-British, French and American sectors...the city remained separated until 1989 when the wall "fell".  In 1990, formal reunification took place.

Where the original wall stood near the Reichstag there is a plaque and a shadow line that followed where it stood- and if you follow it along, you will see that the wall stood directly in front of the Reichstag and the Brandenburg Gate-it is incredible to think that the wall stood directly in front of these major monuments.  Families were separated, businesses lost, and life as Berliners and Germans knew it changed for over 20 years.

 

 

   
Even the walk signals in half of the city remain the same as they were when the city was split by the wall...here is a copy of the Ampersand Man...the walk symbol in East Berlin:

  
 Oh, and by the way, I found the perfect souvenir for you.  I hope that they fit!

Magnificent Manchester

The Hub has been on the road every week in this month of November, so I decided to tag along with him to Manchester, UK...I had very few expectations about Manchester-except for the fact that it, in fact, had both a Marks & Spencer and a Gap store, that it lays claim to such bands as the Beatles and the Smiths for both of their unique sounds...and that it was 2nd banana to London.

Boy, was I surprised by what I found:

Manchester provided us with some of the best Thai curry we have had in a long while-maybe since we were in Thailand.  It has an area that is nicknamed "The Curry Mile" and one of the largest Chinatowns to be found. I found the city to be lovely-red brick and mortar buildings and bustling streets.  I stopped and had a lovely tea at a small tea shop (as shown in all of it's beauty in the first pic) in the Northern Quarter-which I could have spent days exploring.  The Quarter is chocked full of independent and artist owned stalls and shops...heaven.  And good tea too.  The thing that I liked about Manchester the most, though, was the friendliness of the people.  Everywhere I went, I met happy and cheerful people-ready to help in shops, cafes or with helpful directions on the street (my map was pitiful).

I had come to Manchester thinking that I would find a broken down, dodgy town. What I found was nothing of the sort and  I left realizing that it was a real jewel...and with my bag full of Cadbury treats!

AWOL

So, here in pictures are some of the things we did and saw on our road trip... 

Dresden

 

Boleslawiec, Poland for the pottery festival

Genoa, Italy

Loads of driving through the European countryside

San Remo

Provence

Avignon, France

Pont du Nord

Nimes, France

Arles, France

And a last minute left turn down into Spain to our last stop of Barcelona

Ummm, I did have a waist in there somewhere...oh, well, it was HOT and Barcelona was lovely.....more to come, including a visit from a few of my oldest and dearest gal pals and oh, yeah, Oktoberfest!