Berlin Day 1

It's 6pm in Berlin and we have been here for about 28 hours. Sam is resting and I'm committed to sitting down and writing it until it is finished and then I will continue contemplating how I have managed to get so far behind. Perhaps some day if I ever have extra time and some will/effort I will sit down and write about Edinburgh from I think 2018, Germany and skiing in the Austrian Alps in 2019, Denver 2021, Maui January 2022, and a few other assorted trips.

But for now I can at least commit to today.

On to our trip, so we left from PDX at 12:00pm on the 24th. I honestly was trying to be cautious so we arrived at about 10:30. Of course we were checked in, passports scanned, and through security by 10:45 so then we just sat there. We flew to Seattle and landed by 12:50pm and our connection to Reykjavik was to be at 3:50pm. However it was delayed to 4:50pm so we had a lovely 4 hour layover at Seattle. Why Alaska didn't deem it worth their while to put us on say a 2pm flight to Seattle is beyond me but we did a good time passing the time and have now walked more or less the entirety of Sea-Tac.

Our 7 hour flight to Reykjavik was more or less uneventful other than the fact that we were only served drinks. No in flight meal and not so much as a pack of stale peanuts. Wild. However we luckily ate at Sea-Tac and had some meat and nuts (thanks mom) to tide us over. We were to arrive at Reykjavik at 6:10am on the 25th and depart at 7:40am but due to the delay were to arrive at 7:10am giving us 30 minutes of layover, which of course really isn't enough. We also had to go through passport control on the way in. We are now both sporting dashing stamps from Reykjavik and while we were prepared to run through the terminal our gate was only 2 stops away from customs and out outbound flight was also delayed due to weather. Reykjavik was like landing on the moon, completely barren, very cloudy so we couldn't really see anything anyway, and so windy that the entire airplane was rocking back and forth which was really crazy. A bit of turbulence on the way in and out as well. I slept the last hour or two on our flight in and more or less the entire 4 hour flight to Berlin. Sam managed to not sleep at all which is pretty incredible. We landed about 2pm Berlin time which was 5am Portland time. We committed to not sleeping until 8pm which is 11am Portland time which we both managed and so Sam was awake for nearly 28 hours straight. I'm really not sure how he did it as I was already getting that extra motion like you're on a boat feeling from being so tired. We both experienced extremely puffy hands from being so tired too.

Anna picked us up from the airport and it was so great seeing her. I haven't seen her since 2018. We took the underground to her apartment and then walked to a Japanese place for dinner which was excellent. We then continued on to a huge park, Mauer park, and watched a Sunday event which is a weekly outdoor karaoke in a large outdoor amphitheater. It was great fun, we heard one excellent singer, and half a dozen terrible ones who were incredibly enthusiastic lol. It was a great first night.

Today we got up and had a leisurely breakfast at the flat. We've determined both from Pinterest and from talking to Anna that Berlin is an exciting and fun city but not really so much to do tourist wise. We selected a brunch cafe that seemed fun and walked about 40 minutes through town to get there. We took many detours so the real walk was much longer, we passed Museum Island and many cute shops and restaurants. Sam and I have also determined that Berlin is about 90% made up of restaurants, cafes, and bars. It's really incredible how many there are here. Here we are at Museum Island, sam was very lucky because I was able to get a shot of him without anyone in the background.

Berlin is really great about public transportation, Anna doesn't own a car and it is easy to get around with an excellent underground system on top of buses. We find it to be a very fun city to walk around in but overall I don't think we're city people. At some point, a city is a city is a city to me. But its been great fun to see Berlin. Tomorrow we plan on going to the Museums, they were closed today, and then Wednesday perhaps to the botanical gardens. We stopped at the House of Small Wonders for lunch and Sam had a cappuccino and home made eggs benedict with wasabi hollandaise and potatoes au gratin. I had a miso udon carbonara which actually was very good and a hot chocolate. Both our drinks had hearts in them, aren't they cute?

We'll spend a few more days in Berlin and then take a train to a tiny, tiny town called Nesselröden where we'll attend the wedding of one of Sam's friends from highschool. After that we're heading down to the Italian Dolomites for a few days of hiking, a quick pit stop in Venice, and then home... Fingers crossed I can keep a more daily account this trip!