Germany - Day 5

Alright, so we made it to Berlin. It was incredibly hot outside, around 95 degrees. Once getting out of the train station we took the subway to the east side where our hotel was. First impressions were not that great and we sort of found ourselves in a pretty rough neighborhood , while taking a wrong turn getting to the hotel. There was broken glass and graffiti strewn about everywhere in the city. It was tough to tell if it was part of the artist neighborhood we were staying in or just a poor section of town.

After settling into our hotel, taking another shower and decompressing we headed out for the day around noon. We hit up the Berliner Dom, which is perhaps the largest church I have ever seen. We walked up to the top of the dome for an impressive view of the surrounding city. 

Next stop was to the Pergamon Museum, which showcases some amazing antiquities from the middle east. The most impressive part of it is probably the reconstruction of the Ishtar gate from the city of Babylon. The stone tables that they had one display were also incredibly detailed and really impressive. By this point we were both pretty tied and I actually found myself nodding off a couple of times while sitting on a bench in the museum. 

Our last stop for the day was to hit up the Brandenburg Gate. Unfortunately there was a sort of summer festival being setup behind it so we couldn't get very close. The US Embassy is located right next to it as well and there were lots of flowers out front in response to the night club shooting that had occurred a few weeks earlier. 

 Dinner was at schlesisch blau, which was a nice restaurant. I had fish and I cannot remember what Megan had. There was a huge summer salad though that came with four or five vinaigrette options. 

Germany - Day 4

Day four had us saying goodbye to our awesome apartment in Munich and catching a train to Nuremberg. We left our photos on the travel wall and hopped on the high speed train for about an 90 minute ride up to Nuremberg. 

What makes Nuremberg so unique are primarily two things. 1) the medieval old town portion of the city, which includes Albrecht Durer's house and the castle and the court house where the Nuremberg trials were held. The old portion of the city is filled with old stone buildings, including some very old stone cathedrals. It was amazing that just a few city blocks held three very large catholic cathedrals. 

More cathedrals and some lunch before we headed off to the Albrecht Durer's house and the castle. 

Albrecht Durer's house was a highlight of the city. Very cool inside. 

Next up was the old royal castle. Great medieval   style here compared to the rocco style seen in the other royal palaces. This is actually what I was expected most of the castles to look like inside. the castle also had a great history of the royal families and the politics around the Holy Roman Empire. 

Next step was the court room where the Nuremberg trials were held. There was a a nice museum attached to the court room, but by this time of the day we were pretty fired. It was hot, in the 90's during the day. 

We finished off the day at a toy museum and some dinner, before we began our true adventure back at the train station. 

I'll let my videos describe our adventure in the Nuremberg train station, but I will add that we ran into a heartbreaking individual while waiting for our trains around midnight in the station. While sitting on some benches waiting for our trains there was a young man sitting across from us. He asked us if we were American and then proceeded to ask how he could get to America. Through our conversations we found out he is Iraqi and he showed us his Iraq passport. He had been living in Germany for eleven years and he was unable to make a living there. He wanted to literally try and achieve the "American Dream". I didn't know what to tell the guy. He seemed so hopeless . The only advice I could give to him was to go online and goto the US State Department website to looking into what the immigration process might be. 

Germany - Day 3

Day 3 of our trip to Germany was an excursion out to the country to visit two castles and the town of Oberammergau. We took about an 90 minute bus ride out to the country and the edge of the alps to get to the castles. Our guide told us that Austria was a mere miles away on the other side of the mountains. 

Our first castle was Castle Linderhof. It was the hunting lodge of King Ludwig II. He was a reclusive "mad" king and lived in this palace in almost complete solitude. The castle was not huge, at least by palace standards, but it was incredibly ornate, decorated in a french style known as Rocco in Germany. Unfortunately photos of the interior were not allowed. 

The second stop on the trip was to the town of Oberammergau. There wasn't anything here that really was that impressive, but it was a nice little country town. There seemed to be a whole bunch of these small towns in the countryside. 

The third and final stop on our tour took us to castle Neuschwanstein. This is perhaps the most famous castle in Germany and is known as the "Disney" castle as the castle in Disney land was modeled after it. The castle was also building by Ludwig II, but it was not completed or fully furnished before his mysterious death. The castle is only 1/3 complete and only one of the floors is decorated. During World War II the Nazi's stored art in the building to keep it from being bombed by allied forces. 

The yellow castle you see in the photo is that of King Ludwig II's mother and she lived just below castle Neuschwanstein. Both castles are surrounding by five lakes, one of which you can see in our photos. It was very pretty. 

We finished off the day back in Munich for some dinner. A nice summer salad and a "chef's selection" for our entree. 



Germany - Day 2

The second day of our trip really has us kicking into Munich. The morning starts of off with one of the most impressive locations on the whole trip at the Munich Residenz. This is the royal palace for the House of Wittelsbach. As you can see from the photos, they had quite a liking to French style decorations. It is hard to describe from the photos who truly intricate and impressive some of the decorations are, but they were some of the most impressive decorations I had ever seen in my life. 

A lunch with some wienerschnitzel, beaten, spaetzle, potato salad before we took the subway up north to the Olympia Park from the 1972 Olympics and the BMW headquarters and museum. 

After the museum, and an increasingly warm day Megan and I were feeling pretty worn out. We finished off the evening with a light dinner which was a cheese plate and some beer. I have to say that I was extremely impressed with the beer in Germany. I am not a beer drinker, but I had more beer in the week that i was there than I probably had in my entire life. It may be important to note that you do not get free water at restaurants. You have to buy all of your water bottles, usually with "gas" and it costs about as much as the beer. A 0.3L glass of beer is typically around €3-4.

Germany - Day 1

Megan and I had been talking about going to Europe for several years now and we decided to just "pull the trigger" and get it done. German was the destination and I bought airline tickets last fall and assumed we would just figure out our itinerary over the next several months. Our trip this year was to visit Munich, Nuremberg, and Berlin. 

The flight into Germany went fine, although Megan didn't get much sleep on the plane. We knew we were going to arrive around mid-morning so we had to check into our Air BnB apartment and then figure out something for the afternoon. Our apartment was located abut two blocks from the main train station. One of the tenants of the apartment, Marina, met us there to let us in. The apartment was gorgeous. You'll see some more photos of the apartment later. 

For our first afternoon we were planning on hitting up a couple of art museums, namely the Pinakothek der Moderne. Unfortunately it was closed because it was a Monday. Our afternoon was starting off poorly, but we then decided to head of to the Englisher Garten, which is Munich's "Central Park".

The highlights of this garden were the manmade river that ran through the center of it and the beer garden. On many days in the summer residents would swim in the river. It was sitting unusually high on this day though due to recent rains. They have a small section near the south side of the park where surfers ride the waves. 

Look at the size of that beer. 

After lunch in the garden we went and walked around the grounds of the Residenz, which was the royal palace. 

We then just sort of wandered around the "old town" area, and walked into a beautiful church and got luck by walking up to see the Glockenspiel right when it was going off. 

The day finished off by hitting up another church and also walking through the main market square. 

Mexico - Day 5 and flying home

So day five was just our flight home from Mexico. Overall I have to say I was really impressed and had a great time there. The people and the food were fantastic. The country was fun. I would go back in a heartbeat. 

I did however catch the infamous stomach bug so I was knocked off my feet bad with a fever for a couple of days. I ended up having to go to the doctor, but in the end I chalk it all up to part of the experience. 


Mexico - Day 4

So day four was our most touristy day of the trip. We spent the day at a place called Xcaret, which I guess I would describe as a sort of amusement park. It is built around an underground river that connects to the ocean. Basically a natural lazy river and you spend a good hour or so floating down this river to the main section of the park. 

The river was pretty cool, but they funnel everyone who enters the park to this location first so it is extremely crowded during the morning. We actually went back and tried one of the other routes on the river (there are a total of three) around 2:00 pm that afternoon and we were basically the only ones on the river at that point. 

Lunch turned out to be pretty good. It was a one of three buffets in the park and we elected to goto the Mexican one. It was huge and the food was very high quality. The horchata also really hit the spot in the afternoon heat. 

The rest of the park I would consider to be "so-so". Many of the attractions required additional expense, so we sort of meandered around there aquarium and their Mayan village section for a few hours. There was a nice botanical type garden and a pretty good butterfly house. 

Those turned out to be pretty neat, but the highlights of the day really turned out to be the shows we stumbled across. 

First was some aerial dancers who did a sun ceremony on top of a pole. You can see the photos below. 

The next performance we came across was some sort of Mayan ritual dance. Again, a great performance. 


The highlight though was the grande finale at the end of the evening, which was a two hour show starting at 7:00 pm. If you don't go to this thing I wouldn't consider the park worth it. The show was basically a highlight of Mexico's entire history and heritage and it would be the opening ceremony to the Olympics of Mexico got them. The first hour focused on the Mayan history and the arrival of the spaniards to Mexico. The second half then focused on the traditional folk music and dance from different areas of the country. 

It was incredible and I was taken aback by how much pride was displayed from the audience. Mexicans who were there at the show were singing to many of the songs and they really got into the show. It really was quite impressive. 



Mexico - Day 3

Day three in Mexico was gorgeous. The weather was amazing and not too hot. That day was our day to go scuba diving. So we did a demo of scuba diving two days earlier in the hotel pool to get an idea if either of us would "freak out" while under water. We both handled it well so we decided to sign up for the excursion.

That morning we met back at the pool and the dive instructors ran us through about two hours worth of training. We got the basics down. We then chilled at the pool for a couple of hours and then later that afternoon came back for our dive. 

Now our dive group was small, only three people but there was another group that was diving with us. I have to say that I enjoyed the dive, but I didn't quite fall in love with it as I thought I would. I had some problems equalizing the pressure in my right ear so there was quite a bit of discomfort and both Megan and I had some ear issues when we were done diving. The water was also a bit murky due to the storms that had rolled through the area a few days earlier. 

Now when they said they were going to take us diving, they really did take us diving. We dove to ten meters, which is right around thirty feet. I could see how people could possibly freakout down at this level and you do get a bit of reverse vertigo when you look up to the surface and cannot see the top of the water. 

I would highly recommend the experience though for anyone who is wishing to try it out. It was well worth it. 

After diving we then went out and had some afternoon tea on the balcony of the hotel and then went to the spa for a massage. The evening ended with some pasta at the hotel's Italian restaurant. 

Mexico - Day 2

Day two of Mexico was our big day visiting Mayan ruins. We visited the ruins of Tulum, which was costal city and the ruins of Coba, which was located about 45 km inland from the coast. 

Tulum was extremely pretty. It was a good sized city with a large wall around it located right on the cliffs of the coast. The site was completely packed with people though and it was extremely hot. Iguanas were everywhere and Megan really felt the need to try and capture them as much as she could. 

After spending a couple of hours at Tulum we then made our way over to Coba, first stopping for lunch at a local restaurant in the town. The food was just 'OK', but it was a very pleasant restaurant and we sat on an open air balcony on the second level .

Next stop was the city of Coba, just up the road. Coba was very different than Tulum. Most notably was that it was extremely spread out over a large area. So much so that it is recommended that you rent a bicycle to get around the ruins. Coba definitely had more of the pyramids that one might expect from a Mayan city. We visited three in total, plus two ball courts that were used for sport. Our guide, Paco, told us a story how one of the courts was essentially built upon a sports center that a wealthy and powerful woman from the time built for her son, who was apparently a good athlete. 

Once at Coba, we had the opportunity to do what we really came there for and that was to climb the 136 steps to the top of one of the pyramids. It was, hot but a lot of fun and the view was great. Getting back down though was a bit hair raising. 

Finally we ended our tour that day by visiting a Cenote, which is sinkhole in limestone filled with rain water. It was refreshing since the heat that day was so hot. The water was extremely cold and there were fish in there. Megan seemed to have a better time swimming in it than I did as I seemed to sink almost immediately. 

We ended our day back at the hotel at the restaurant Ventanas, which was the fanciest restaurant there. It was a gastropub so all of the food was top notch. we were exhausted though and I was literally having trouble trying to stay awake at the dinner table.