Ich bin ein Texaner

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 ...

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...

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...

If you follow me on Facebook, you probably know that I spent a week in Croatia recently, in celebration of my friend Becky's significant birthday. She wanted to go somewhere awesome and inexpensive, which makes for a short list. She settled on Croatia and asked if I'd like to go along. I'm closer than most, so it's easier for me to get there. After poking around a bit, I got really excited about the trip and ended up doing a fair bit of the planning for it. Becky had set aside a week for the trip, plus a couple of days on either end for traveling and recovery. She really wanted to go to Zagreb,  Plitviče  Lakes National Park, Split, and Dubrovnik. We decided to rent a car rather than take trains so we could keep our own schedule. Then it was just a matter of deciding what to do. I found a day-long tour of the national park, including pickup from and dropoff to Zagreb. That consolidated things a bit and made travel easier by one stop. Still, three cities in a week is...