Berlin

I must say, this is one of my favorite cities. So much history and culture! And of course, I had some of the best beer of my life in Berlin.

I traveled to Berlin with my friends Hana and Calli and we decided to do a bike tour of the city (which we did on Saturday). It was a nice way to get a brief history of some of the most famous sites of the city! Our guide, Nil, really knew his stuff and was also hilarious! At the beginning he asked, "Are Americans here? Ok. Irish? Ok. Spanish? Ok. English? Ok. French? No French? Alright, it's safe to make jokes about the French!" Then we got started! We visited Brandeburg Gate, Checkpoint Charile, the site of Hitler's bunker, (what's left of) the Berlin Wall, Tiergarten Park (and had lunch at a beer garden there), the site of the Nazi book-burning, Reichstag, Humboldt University and so many other buildings I can't remember them all!

On Sunday, we went to a flea market that's very popular, and you can find everything from clothes to records to furniture to hand-made crafts. After, we visited the graffiti-painted portion of the wall which was so cool to see!

Enjoying a Berliner Pilsner!

By the meeting spot of the bike tour

Trying to get on my bike- the shortest one they had and I still had trouble touching my feet to the ground!

The site of the Nazi book-burning. The memorial is a glass top that overlooks a room with empty bookshelves underground.

Calli and I by a section of the Wall.

A memorial to all the Jews killed. Before, there was an idea to build a giant oven that would be constantly burning in this space here (as a memorial)... a little too out there, don't ya think?

Brandenburg Gate. "The American embassy is very close to here... wait, that's a Starbucks! The American Embassy is down a little further." Our guide had a great sense of humor!

Calli, Hana and myself at the graffiti-painted part of the Wall.

El desayuno! = Breakfast!

Caroline and I had the honor of cooking our host family a traditional American breakfast. (Well, it was actually breakfast for dinner). We made pancakes (and had real maple syrup), scrambled eggs with cheese, fruit salad, and of course bacon! (made by yours truly- which was a hit!). And to drink we made them mimosas and we were able to find Ben & Jerry's ice cream which we served for dessert.

They loved it! They were so fascinated by maple syrup and the fact that it comes from trees. They asked Caroline and me if everyone in the United States knows about pancakes and syrup. And we said, "Yeah, pretty much everyone." They couldn't believe it! They were so shocked that (almost) everyone in the United States has eaten a meal like this before, but they enjoyed it! They enjoyed it so much we decided to leave them the rest of the pancake mix with them (yes, I know- it was a mix, we didn't make them from scratch, but how American to do it the easy way though!). Scrambled eggs and bacon aren't foreign to them, but they ate all of the bacon I made- all three packages of it! They also loved the mimosas, however we had to make them with Cava (the Spanish champagne) instead of "real" champagne- but again, they loved it so much they polished off the bottle! (Our host parents did- we gave the kids just orange juice).

Unfortunately, I have no pictures to share at the moment, I am waiting to get them from my host-dad, but I can't wait to show all of you them when I'm back home!

The City of Lights!

Ah... Paris! What a wonderful city. Unfortunately, it wasn't at first. My friends and I had quite the rocky start! Three of the girls flew to Paris out of different airport (it's about an hour from Barcelona). They had to catch a bus to get to the airport at 4 a.m. but there was a bus strike going on so they needed to find a different way to get there. They had to leave the night before around 10:30 p.m. and take a train to the airport since that was the last one of the night (and the one that started in the morning wasn't early enough), so they had to wait in the airport for a solid 7 hours for their flight!

My friend Hana and I flew out of El Prat (the main airport here), but our flight got delayed. After waiting awhile and finally arriving in Paris, we were all able to meet up at the Arc de Triomphe at 2:30 p.m. And right off the bat, we met someone who did not like Americans. We were called lazy and were told that there was a McDonalds down the street if we wanted our "own cuisine". Ouch.

We didn't let that bother us and were determined not to judge Paris off of that one person, so we decided to explore the city and try to get a feel for the other locals. We walked around a lot and stopped for fresh pastries. Once it became dark, we took a boat tour that took us down and back up the river in Paris, which was a lot of fun. It soon became midnight and we all started to get really tired and wanted to get some rest. Well, our living arrangements for the weekend fell through (an extremely long story!) so there we were: five American girls on the streets of Paris after midnight, with nowhere to go, and not sure what to do. There were no hostels located in the center of the city and we had no access to a computer took look up the nearest, cheap hotel or hostel. We walked around a little bit and found a Best Western hotel and went inside, hoping the person at the front desk could help us. He looked up some hostels for us and even called them, but we were having no luck trying to get one for the night. We didn't really want to stay at the Best Western because it was fairly expensive and all of us were on a very tight budget. Well, the tension grew between each of us and the arguing started. The man saw how frustrated and scared we were and gave us a hotel room for half the price! We were all so grateful and took the room.

We had a good nights sleep and took advantage of the free breakfast in the morning and we were all in a much, much better mood. After we checked out, we were able to find a different hotel that was very affordable (but far from luxurious!) that we were all very comfortable with.

So we finally got to sight seeing! We started out with Notre Dame and then the Eiffel Tower. We bought the ticket that took us all the way to the top and the view was unbelievable. It was getting fairly late and we decided to go out to a nice restaurant to celebrate our friend Hana's birthday that was the following Monday. We picked a random Italian restaurant and we had the best time! The wait staff was so much fun and made us laugh the entire night! We told them it was Hana's birthday and they turned down the lights and put on a "pop" Happy Birthday song and came out dancing with tirmisu and a round of limoncello! We stayed there until the restaurant closed because these guys we're so friendly and hilarious and we were having the best time with them! This definitely made up for our bad experience from the day before. By this time it was close to 2 a.m. so we went back to our hotel and went to bed.

We got up the next morning and had to check out of our hotel room and go to the one next door (they were partner hotels). The woman at the front desk told us our room wasn't finished being cleaned so she told us to put our stuff down in the lobby and we could wait if we wanted. She asked if we had eaten breakfast yet and when we told her that's what we were going to do next she sat us down at a table and insisted on feeding us. She brought us fresh orange juice, coffee, and croissants with jam! By the time we were finished eating, our room was ready and we put our luggage there and headed for the Louvre! Since it was a holiday on that Sunday the museum was free. We figured we would be standing in line forever waiting to get in, but the whole process only took about a half hour! (Not too bad, huh?)

We were in the Louvre for hours and hours and were only in one wing of the entire museum. Of course, we had to see some of the most famous pieces of art like the Mona Lisa and Venus de Milo. Walking through the museum and admiring all the art, I couldn't believe I was in the place that was home to some of the greatest masterpieces of all time. Later, we went out for dinner and headed back to the hotel to veg out for a little bit. All the girls fell asleep (we had to get up at the crack of dawn to catch our flight) besides my friend Calli and me so we went out for a glass of wine to toast the city of Paris!