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Weekend in Berlin

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We posted a little bit about this on FB, but there was so much we saw and did in Berlin that it merits a blog post. It was our 30th anniversary, and Robert suggested going away for a long weekend. Our criteria? We wanted to go someplace we'd never been, and we wanted to stay in a place with air conditioning. No small task in our part of the world! We looked at various places nearby, and then Robert came up with the idea of going to Berlin. We found a hotel with AC, and Expedia made the whole thing affordable, so off we went! Hotel front door. I liked the design. Large comfy bed. And did I mention there was AC?? We flew from Munich to Berlin on Friday the 26th. We checked into the hotel and found an Italian place nearby that was well-reviewed. We went early since we hadn't had much of a lunch. The dinner was good, but the ice cream dessert was the star of the show -- a ball of ice cream with vanilla in the middle and chocolate on the outside, coated in cocoa, and
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Real or Not? or Is That Thing About Germany True?

Americans have many perceptions about Germans and Germany, some of which have some basis in fact and some of which are, of course, not true at all. I'm going to try to talk to a few of these. German Food I think this is one of the things in which the American perception is accurate to some degree. The German diet is indeed pretty heavy in sausage (they serve  Currywurst  once a week in the cafeteria in my office building) and potatoes. There are other things about German cuisine that I didn't know about until I got over here. They eat more pork and less beef than we do in the States. They do like cheese here, but there is a lot more soft cheese (think swiss and gouda) than hard, sharp cheese. Any cheddar that I find here is imported from England or Ireland. The only hard cheese that is found in abundance are Italian hard cheeses ( Parmesan  and  Grana Padano , mostly). Also, like most other countries in Europe, the Germans tend to drink wine or beer with their evening me
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Christmas Markets Galore! (and why we haven't posted in FOREVER!)

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Wow, what terrible bloggers we are. I mean, almost 2 months since our last post. Why the gap? By way of apology, I will give a brief summation of what we've been up to and then post some pics and descriptions thereof, OK? I will hope that, after reading this, you will still click on the links when we post them on FB. I will try to post more stuff. Really. As a side note, I'm not going to identify our visitors as I have not gotten permission to do do (other than my kids, who don't care). Our first set of Christmas Market visitors arrived on Tuesday night, November 20th. I know, right? TWO MONTHS AGO! Anyway, we went into Munich one day with them and then we departed for a whirlwind journey of train rides. Thursday morning took us to Salzburg. We decided to go up to  Festung Hohensalzburg  (literally, "High Salzburg Fortress"). This 11th century castle has some amazing history as well as lovely views of the city. Salzburg at night from the Fortress. It has to
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Darting Around Dubrovnik (Croatia Part 3)

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I had a fantastic time in Croatia -- so much so that I had to create three posts, one about each city I visited. If you want to read about Zagreb or Split , please do! I'm about a month late in posting this, but better late than never, right? We drove from Split to Dubrovnik . Both cities are on the coast. It reminded me of driving down the Pacific Coast Highway in California -- amazing sea vistas around every corner. There's even a border crossing. You go into Bosnia for a few miles, then back into Croatia. The southern bit of Croatia is essentially an island; it's not connected to the rest of the country at all. And that's the only spot where Bosnia touches the Adriatic Sea. A friend sent me this meme before I went on the trip. It still makes me laugh. Like the other parts of Croatia, Dubrovnik is gorgeous. We'd gotten used to staying uphill from the city center in Split, but this was a whole 'nother level. My FitBit told me that it was 25 flights fr
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Speeding around Split (Croatia, part 2)

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I had so much fun -- and took so many photos -- in Croatia that I'm splitting it into three posts. You can find the first post, devoted to Zagreb,  here . After spending two nights in Zagreb, and soaking up some amazing food and sights, we spent Monday driving to Split. Google Maps initially told me it'd take four hours, but it was more like five and a half. For the first I-don't-know-how-long (but-it-seemed-like-forever), we were in a 40km speed limit zone. That's 25mph. As Becky said, it was the land of school zones. Now Sammy Hagar is singing "I can't drive 25" in my head... We arrived in Split and were able to make our way to the neighborhood of our AirBnB, but it was impossible to tell from the street which house was the right one. Fortunately our host was super responsive and said that his dad would come out to meet us. Sure enough, we found dad straightaway, and he coached us into the tiny parking spot meant for our car. Then he took my giant su
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