Ciao Venezia

We have been planning on going to Venice for quite some time and we thought it would be a great place to start our Italian vacation.  We flew into a nearby city Treviso and then from there took a quick, easy and affordable bus into the city.  We ended up staying in a great little hotel walking distance to everything and this is the first hotel we have stayed at I believe on this entire trip because usually we rent out apartments.  Venice of course is beautiful and there isn't a whole lot to say so we will do this as a picture blog with commentary.

Canals like this one are plentiful.  I think the best way to see Venice is just to walk around and get lost which is hard to do because you always seem to end up in the same spot.

Drew in Saint Mark's Square.  You can see a lot of pigeons but they did not seem as crazy as when I was there ten years ago with my parents.

The Rialto bridge.  This is a very touristy area of town but the bridge is beautiful except for the huge banner on the front advertising some museum.  Why would they do that?

More Beautiful Canals.

We took a picture in front of this building on the right because of the texture of the wall but it really doesn't come out in the photo.

An old British lady insisted on taking our photo here as she saw us walking through the streets.  She asked us if we understood her English so maybe she wasn't British.

Posing.

Gondoliers getting ready to take some people out.  Apparently you have to be licensed to be a Gondolier and there can only be so many of them and the prices for day and night trips are fixed by the city.

Okay so we have to write about this food.  It is from the number one rated restaurant on Trip advisor called Alfredo's.  It is hard to find but so worth it for a quick lunch take away spot.  They give you a pound of pasta for 6 or 7 euros and since they have no tables we just took it to a nearby canal and ate on the water and watched the Gondola's go by.  If in Venice and looking for a quick lunch stop then do not miss this place!

We were trying to find our way home and got lost in this spot on the Grand Canal.  Dead end!

I don't think photos do the canals justice.

Drinking beers while walking around the streets.

Obligatory handstand photos, more to come.

I am actually hovering above water here on our walk home.  No one was around because everyone seems to go to bed around 10 PM in Venice which is so different from other European cities (maybe because everyone in Venice seems to be American).

Inside the church at Saint Mark's Square where there are signs for no pictures everywhere but no one seems to abide by that rule including us.

I thought this was so cool.  I was wondering how locals worked out or even lived with all of the tourists around but this guy seems to have found a way by riding his bike on the canals with floaties attached to each side.  We had a great two days in Venice which was plenty of time.  The city is small and we started seeing the same things repeatedly after the first day.  Next stop Firenze (Florence)!

Home in Amsterdam

Hoi Hoi!  So while in Europe Amsterdam will be our home base.  Our good friends Emily and Jim live there and have been so gracious as to host us off and on for the next few months.  The Netherlands hold a special place in my heart as I studied abroad in the country and now coming back it feels like home.  Since Drew and I have both been to Amsterdam our goal while here is just to make it feel like we live here with our friends that we already have and meet new friends as well.

A big portion of our time revolves around family dinners.  Emily is a great cook and has allowed me to help her in the kitchen to make her life a little easier.  On our first night in Amsterdam Jim picked us up from the airport and Emily made us Tacos in the slow cooker which were some of the best I have ever had!  I ended up making a burrito bowl (think Chipotle but better).

We get a lot of our groceries at the market where everything is on sale for much cheaper than the actual store.  They also have fresh stroopwaffles.  If you don't know I love Stroopwaffles (a coaster shaped cookie with caramel in the middle of it).

Nate (who also came to Spain) had never been to the Heineken Factory so while Jim was at work one day we all went on the tour.  I think it was the 10th time I have done it in my life but first time in five years.  

With the tour you get three beers (one in the taste testing room) and then two after with buttons that they give you on your wrist band.  Luckily people drop their buttons and we were able to pick them up and get extra drinks.  The tour is quite funny and includes a ride which shows you how to make beer that includes spraying water on you and heating you up and shaking you around (like disneyland but lower budget).

The canals are so pretty.  They look dirty but our Dutch friends insist you can swim in them and that the water is clean and is washed through twice a day.  It's so clean that even Queen Maxima (from Argentina) has swam in them.

Drew and I on the I Amsterdam sign.  Luckily the letters D and A are near each other.  If you haven't noticed we always have the same clothes on because we each brought one jacket and who would have thought that in June it would still be freezing cold.

This is the view from Jim and Emily's balcony and anytime it is nice we sit out on the balcony and play cards.  Emily has a nice garden going on with all the flowers and herbs you could imagine.  They also have a unique apartment which has the same size balcony on both sides of the apartment but the sun shines on this side more.

We decided one night to go to a coffee shop (not to be confused with a cafe which serves coffee).  Of course it was raining but we had a good time and got this lovely picture.

I have two Dutch friends (Bram and Rien) that are twins that I have known for years and live in Amsterdam.  I introduced Emily to them and she became part of their circle of friends.  Where I am going with this is that what goes around comes around and this is a friend of Bram and Rien's named Jarno on the left that has been a great tour guide and friend to hang out with that Emily introduced us to.

Such a great tour guide that we spent my favorite day in Amsterdam on his boat touring the canals with prosecco and cheese.  It was such a nice day and so much fun.  I had been on tours of the canals but never on a boat for 8 hours with friends.  By far my favorite day!

Us going through a tunnel on the boat.

Beautiful views in the background.

Drew and I.

Sometimes the tunnels get so low that you have to lay down.  Including the person driving the boat.  What I should mention here is that Emily is wearing my extra clothes and a towel which is because on the way home from the canals we have to briefly go into water with big ships.  A wave hit us and she was too slow to react and was covered in water and freezing cold because the sun was going down and the temperatures dropping.  We sadly didn't get a picture of the event but it will forever be ingrained in my mind.

Us at Vondell Park on another nice day!  Music cards and food!

One of Emily's last nights.  Jarno and Robert hosted a going away party and this was us leaving to go to it!

One of her goals before leaving was to ride bikes through the city.  We only had two bikes and had to ride to Emily's friends house from Dutch class named Inga to pick up the third.  It was quite hilarious because the Dutch make riding someone on the back look so easy since they have been doing it their entire lives but we made it look hard!  If you haven't seen the video footage, just ask.  We almost wrecked several times.

It is much easier to have three bikes!  Canal photos.

The I Amsterdam sign in Museumplein is always filled with tourists but on our bike ride home at about 930 PM (yes its still this light out at this time) we decided to go by it since it was on the way home and literally there was nearly no one there so we were able to get a much better panoramic.  We are off to Italy soon for a few weeks.  Venice, Florence, Cinque Terra and Rome!!!  Until then....Tot Ziens!

Ich bin ein Berlin

 It has been harder to blog in Europe than we had anticipated but we have been keeping track of all of the photos we want to share, sites we have seen and restaurants we have eaten at so when we had some down time (or when it is just much too hot to go outside) we can blog.  We recently went to Berlin for Drew's first visit to Germany and my first visit to East Germany and we actually got passport stamps at the Berlin Wall which took up an entire page and has six stamps showing the six regions Berlin had been split up into at one point.  Another reason we decided to go to Berlin was that our friend Guillaume that we had met in Indonesia was going to be there for four days.  We have always heard Berlin is one of the best cities in the world and I can totally see why people think that because we had the best time even though it torrentially down poured on us the entire time.  We had umbrellas but with the wind whipping sideways we looked like drowned rats at all times.  Berlin is the probably the most spread out city I have ever been to in all of Europe.  It is massive and the locals told us they have five different downtowns because the area is so big.  So we always had to travel by metro which was super cheap and easy.

Because of the rain the metro was uncontrollably crowded and they have no air flow so I was a sweaty mess.  It was so crowded that at one point a Russian kid about four years old was sitting on my lap.

Our friend Guillaume introduced us to Geocaching.  It is a really cool way to see a city and there are applications on iphones and blogs about it but basically it is a scavenger hunt for adults that walks you through the city and down cool streets to see sites you might not normally see.  During our Geocaching we walked through the old Jewish quarters pictured above.

Pictured above is the Holocaust Memorial which consists of 2711 columns and is near the Bradenburg Gate in Berlin.  Drew stood on one of them and got yelled at in English by an old German man.

Here is the Bradenburg Gate which had a cool fair going on outside of it.  This was recently posted in the news as well because Obama just gave a speech there this week.

Drew ordering his first curry wurst which he loved.  Basically its a hot dog in ketchup with curry powder but for some reason it tastes so much better in Germany.

While walking through the fair we went through this park which housed a Russion World War 2 memorial.

This is the Berlin Victory Column which we couldn't get good photos of because the rain started coming down hard.

This is of the Berlin Cathedral in the Museum District of town.  We also had gone by the Berlin Television Tower which looms over the city on our way here and through Alexander Platz (the main square of Berlin I would say) but those just didn't make the blog.

The church was massive.  We tried to go in but were not able to.

Drew will kill me for this photo but we started a trend in Spain with Emily of imitating sculpture and we found this one and I think Drew captured the art piece perfectly.

We went to Dinner with Guillaume and for anyone that visits Berlin EAT HERE!  The name is Jager und Sammler and translates to Hunter and Gatherer.  I had risotto and drew had "ox cheeks."  They were both so so good and the waitress had lived 20 years in Colorado and spoke perfect English so it was easy to order.  

While walking around most cities in Germany you come across these golden squares on the sidewalks which commemorate a victim of the holocaust.  

We tried an authentic German restaurants near our house in Nollendorfplatz and it did not disappoint.  Drew had the Spatzel (basically German pasta) and I had the Schnitzel which you can never go wrong with.

Not much of the Berlin Wall remains but in Potsdam Platz they have pieces of the wall like this one.  There is a section further outside the city that is preserved which has been painted on but our friend Freddy (in the picture as Jager Und Sammler) said it was far away and nothing exciting to see.

The brick path that you see above goes through the city and follows where the wall used to go before it was torn down.

This is another piece of the wall near Hitler's bunker but that didn't make the blog because it has been destroyed and now a plaque is there in its place.

We both loved Berlin more than expected and not to mention I think they have some of the best beers in the world for very cheap.  I couldn't get over how cheap everything was!  We bought a six pack of beer at the grocery store for a 1.36.  We had also walked by a few other churches and the Red City Hall but like I said, we were in a monsoon so not too many of the pictures came out nor did we want to sit out in the rain to get pictures.  This has inspired us to go back to Germany though so we are hopefully going to make it down to Munich at the end of our trip!  Auf wiedersehen!!!