Berlin - Day Eins & Zwei

(At one of the Christmas Markets)

Yeah! I am posting from Berlin. The kids are all 3 fast asleep and Matt and I aren't getting much out of the German TV, so we are being entertained by the computer. Thankfully, he brought his laptop. It's funny to turn on the tv, see Blues Clues or reruns of sitcoms (John Belushi's last one but I can't think of the name of it) and it's all dubbed over in German voices. It just doesn't seem right... The kids don't seem to mind so much. (ok, so I didn't get this posted and I've been home for 3 days now... I tried!)

Anyway, back to Berlin! I'll have to take some pictures of the train ride on the way back because I failed to only take a couple on the way here. (I did!) It was expensive to take the train, but worth every penny in my opinion. The kids can stretch their legs and move around a little instead of being strapped in a seat belt. We didn't have to worry about where to stop for gas or where we would use the restroom. Speaking of restrooms, I did learn that it is much more difficult to use the bathroom on a train than in a plane. Just trust me. I'm glad I'm not a male! (And, we spent a gazillion euros on bathrooms in Berlin. Seriously! One trip cost us $7.50 after converting. I bet we spent $50 easy... enjoy your free restrooms, people!)

So, we got here and got to our apartment. It stated it sleeps 6, and well... it does. Two in the "living" room, 2 in the "kitchen" and 2 more in a side bedroom. It really works well for our set up of people and is much better than being crammed into a tiny hotel room. It's almost impossible to find rooms for 5 anyway. I'll get some pics of the outside tomorrow (can we say graffiti???) but I'll share a few of the inside tonight. Then we enjoyed our Thanksgiving dinner at Hard Rock.

A few of us are missing some toes because of these....

The shower curtain only came around about a 1/3 of the shower. Interesting... but I'm not a fan.

We went to the zoo this morning... yes, in the rain. We were snuggled up really well though and put our umbrellas and hoods to good use. Honestly, it was come and go all day and though we dodged a lot of puddles, we really lucked out overall. After the zoo, we went to the Christmas market accross the street, fed the kids McD's (b/c we spent 40 Euro feeding them lunch at the zoo for nothing more than a weiner & fries and a couple of 1/2 wraps! when you convert - it's a lot of money.... for lunch.)

The zoo was fabulous. I'm sure it is much prettier when the sun is shining and the bushes have leaves on them, but despite that it was still very nice. It's rather large, the kids LOVED it, and it was very clean. I was impressed by some of the habitats for the animals, though I thought a few of their water tanks needed some cleaning. Evidently, one of the monkeys had just had a baby and camera crews were there filming and taking pictures. Watch for us on TV -we may be famous! ha! I was most excited about seeing Knut, the famous bear. Of course, when we got to him... this is what we got to see. I was fearful of that happening.

.

However, we went back and to my excitement - he performed!

Want to know what is funny?? This is Knut!!!!!! (so I got a little confused with the Panda and the Polar. They both start with P, right?) ha! In my defense, the panda is quite famous too.

The elephants were hilarious. We watched them for a while. There was a little baby and we guess a sibling or other younger one who kept kicking each other... then the mom would break them up. It was really cute...

This picture is blurry, but I just had to share him. Yikes!


The kids after day 2. I think this sums it up:

More to come in a few days....