Amsterdam and the first snow ...

Everyone rides bikes!

Danny and Lisa, we are staying in their aparment

Our first morning in Amsterdam it SNOWED! Not that you can see it, but it's there.

Lennon Wall, Prague

Here is a wall in Prague that they love. Every year it gets painted over and every year it gets covered with graffiti again. It's no Eastside Gallery (what's left of the Berlin Wall) but it's cool.

Me : )

Ty after I told him to do a normal pose 

Prague; city of 1,000 spires

So, tonight is our 4th and last night in Praha (what the locals call Prague) and we have realized that 3 1/2 days is more than enough time to see most things in the city. Now I am talking touristy things. There is of course much to see in every city, but if you are a tourist, as we are, and you focus on the important or popular things to see you can do them all in about 2 full days.

We've seen the castle, the Jewish museums, and the incredible Jewish cemetery, the ginormous metronom where Stalin's statue used to be and where when MJ visited Prague, he erected I giant statue of himself there for one day. Now I love Michael Jackson to the 'enth degree, but that's a bit creepy. We've walked across Charles Bridge and seen the astronomical clock "in action" amongst dozens of onlookers. Known for being the 2nd most disappointing wonder of the world, the Mona Lisa is the 1st and we've already seen her in all her 24"12" glory, the clock is a giant disappointment to those who are expecting a good show. To make up for its lack of, well, coolness, the city has paid a man to toot a horn at the top of the building playing the same short little ditty four times, because the tower has four sides, and wave to unhappy tourists thus making them happy again to be in Prague. We've eaten goulash and bread dumplings, gone to Bohemia Bagel twice (an awesome bagel chain here) and I've bought my Czech candy to add to my "candy from every country I visit except for Spain cause I forgot" collection. It's too bad the candy turned out to be from Holland.

Running out of things to do we saw Machete at the local English cinema, got a Thai foot massage and went to the Prague Zoo. We were gonna see the torture museum, but decided it wasn't the best thing to visit after the Jewish cemetery. Plus we paid too much to see the Jewish sights and didn't want to spend more money. So for our last night we're going to go on a bar crawl with a friend we met in Paris whom we randomly ran in to at our hostel. More later ...

Berlin Art Scene

paintings from a San Diego artist that had a show in Cedric's friend Yohan's gallery

The strangest art show I have ever seen: SOMA, look it up on the web and u will find out what it is!

Eastside Gallery

The weekend + a few degrees warmer = a happy Berlin

So it has been insanely cold here in Berlin; the coldest we have experienced yet. Tyler even has to wear his new scarf he took one hour to buy in Lisbon every day! I am wearing layers of clothing including scarves, my new H&M knit hat and my new blue leather gloves I bought here in Berlin. Our hosts, Cedric and Lotti have been amazing taking us to interesting non-touristy places here in Berlin. We have been to two gallery openings, the art scene in Berlin is so rich and vibrant, and last night we had dinner at their friends Menga and Alex's flat. Their apartment was full of art and they had a new puppy, Ines, who is such a sweet pup! Later we went to Soho Club where you need to be a member to enter, and guess what, Cedric and Lotti are members! You are not even allowed to take pictures in the club because they do not want the press or anyone advertising their space.
Today we had breakfast at a typical Bavarian restaurant, white sausage and pretzels with sweet dijon mustard and of course what is a weekend breakfast in Germany without beer! I tried to refuse only to be told that it does not work that way. So I opted for a beer with lemonade, which was so tasty I drank the entire glass. Next we went to a Christmas market that does not open until Monday sadly, however, there were a few stands open early and so we got hot wine with spices and jaeger tea, which is a jaegermeister tea with honey. Two drinks everyone enjoys in the winter and the jaeger tea is a drink that hunters used to keep warm while waiting to, well, hunt. We passed by manz currywurst, preztel and roasted nut stands, the smells were unbelieveable. I think at one point I smelled my grandma's homemade spaghetti sauce, when Ty told me it was the currywurst. So yummy. Tonight we are going to a themed birthday party where you have to where black and/or white, should be fun!

Cold and colder in Berlin

We arrived in Berlin yesterday morning. Tyler's roomie Eric flew in at the same time and Cedric, their good friend of 15 years picked us up in his sleek black 2010 Audi AA that he was test driving and parked in a non-parking spot cause he can with that car. He took us to his apartments, one is where he and his girlfriend live and the other is his old place where guests like us stay. We met his girlfriend Lotti, his sister, Jessica, who lives in the same apartment complex and his dad, Rolf. It was my first time meeting the family, by Rolf didn't recognize Tyler when he saw him so he just shook his hand like he was just meeting him. Then Ty says, It's me Tyler! Rolf laughs, gives him a slap on the cheek and gives him a big hug. When he finds out I am tyler's sister, even though we had just met formally, he hugs me and gives me the European double kiss. Very sweet man and loves to talk and is very engaging. We had a great lunch at the cafe at the bottom of the complex. When we were done everyone got up to leave without paying the bill. Confused we asked how much we owed and Rolf said, Oh we never pay here. Huh?! Ty tells me that this is how the Christiani family does things and to get used to it. Cedric and his dad are in business together and needless to say they make the kind of money that gives them a particular status, and free lunches. I think maybe Cedric has a running tab there, but that's just a guess! Cedric set up dinner for 5 of with a cheese fondu type meal us in the apartment Ced is letting us stay in. Complete with champagne, white wine, beer, mixed sweet martini liquor and Magnum After Dinner ice cream bars, we had a great first dinner in Berlin.

I Love Marseille

Vioux Port

Rome

Rome was great, but it's not as great as some people say! The city was very very dirty with homeless everywhere, metros were discusting ... the only thing that made me love Rome was Vatican City!

Overlooking St. Peter's Basilica and the Vatican courtyard

Colosseum

Inside St. Peter's

More from Madrid and Toledo

Toledo

My favorite park in Madrid

Mom and Dad at Retiro Park, near the Prado

 

Churros con Chocolate!

My good friend Rick Steves, at least he seems like my bestie after all the advice I have followed through his Spain Through the Back Door book, recommended this little place in Madrid for churros with thick hot chocolate. Me, my mom and dad shared some together, buen provecho!

Madrid ~ our last city in Spain

We are in Rome now, but I am going to write about Madrid : )
Madrid was the first city that was actually cold and we LOVED it! No more humidity like in Granada, Tenerife and Barcelona. I still had my summer wardrobe so I bought some winter clothes at Zara, a store I've grown to love including Bershka and the H&M in Europe is way better than in Marin.

:The 3 main things I was looking forward to most about Madrid:
1. The Prado
2. Reina Sophia
3. the weather
AND they did not disappoint!

Our apartment here was shared between 7 people, 6 of whom were girls from Russia, Netherlands, China, Germany, Israel and USA. Every week we lost or gained one or two, but they were always girls. Tyler was a lucky guy! However, we didn't really hang out much with our roommates, which was disappointing because we had made some good friends in the past three cities and were looking forward to making more. But we lucked out in Madrid because we had three friends we met in Tenerife in Madrid at the same time we were. So we had three dinner parties at our friend Ludo's apartment (he lives there and teaches economy at the University), one of which was with my parents who LOVED our Tenerife friends! I also ran into Mr. Travis Long, a high school friend of mine whom I hadn't seen since we graduated 8 years ago, so that was very cool!

The Annunciation, by Fra Angelico

Saturn Devouring his Son

We went to Prado two different times, is so freakin huge you can't see it all in one day. We saw The Annunciation by Fra Angelico, Las Meninas by Diego Velazquez, The Garden of Earthly Delights by Hieronymous Bosch, and Saturn Devouring his Son by Francisco Goya. The last two are my personal favorites! These are not pictures I took, just to show you what we saw, we couldn't take pics inside.

Las Meninas by Diego Velazque

The Garden of Earthly Delights by Hieronymous Bosch

The last week of school our folks came to visit and so I played hooky for most of the week showing them special places in Madrid. We had churros con chocolate and ate at this great tapas place where you could choose from 50 different mini tapa sandwiches all between 1 and 4 euros. I took them to Retiro park which is amazingly beautiful, and we also went to the Thyssen-Bornemizsa Museum, which was surprisingly very nice. It was an exhibit about the friendship between Federico Garcia Lorca and Salvador Dali. Unfortunately I couldn't take any pictures, but here is one of the front of the museum. Another exhibit that began outside and continued on the 4th floor was about kids from around the world. The pictures were enlarged to larger than life size and written was the child's name, age, country and a short blurb about their life. 98% were from very poor countries and in very bad situations, but most were in a better place physically when the pictures were taken.