berlin

berlin is a cool city! we flew up last friday and met matt's two youngest brothers, lucas and nathan. we loved having two young strong uncles with us for our first vacation with kiddos. they were a HUGE help with reese and matson and we also really enjoyed their company. we were all able to stay together in an apartment. reese slept in our room and matson slept with his uncles. i figured they could sleep through his little grunts and sounds better than i could.





matson had a great first flight. he actually didn't make a peep the whole time. the flight back was a little different but he still did very well. reese was really good on the flight up especially when mom pulled out a new small traveling drawing board (HUGE hit with her!) and on the way back a 3 year old german boy was sitting in front of her so they played over the seats, shared food and threw the emergency information cards back and forth. great entertainment!






a quick overview with more in the photo captions...



berlin is a super cool city - very big though. it's old and new, sleek and modern at the same time. it's clean, everyone speaks english and the public transportation system is great! one day we went back to the apartment for naps, but the other days we just put reese in the stroller and dealt with her fussiness later - not the funnest, but it allowed us to be out and about so much longer. the food was good and the beer was great! my favorite is hefeweizen. the weather was perfect - light jackets were needed, but the sun shinning most of the time. matson and reese did really well. the hard part was having to feed matson all the time. it threw us into the european cafe culture whether we wanted to or not. we hit starbucks a couple of times. :)






i have lots of photos to share...

eat up, nathan! that's a huge pork knuckle!
i hope that big löwenbräu beer helped wash it down!

i love german pretzels!

the holocaust memorial

brandenburg gate

nate, matt and lucas sharing their love for football.

you can't get me, uncle nate!

reichstaggebäude (parliament building) or "the beehive" as we called it. having children was a huge benefit to us for this one. there is a special entrance for people with kids in tow so we bypassed the hour+ queue to get in. nice.

inside the reichstaggebäude

a family photo

berliner dom along the spree river.

checkpoint charlie - one of the main checkpoints to cross from one side to the other.

mom + reese cheering on the berlin marathon participants in front of our building!

first the recumbent cyclists and a few specialties came through and then the runners. we jammed to the red band in the background. you could here them from blocks away - very motivating for the athletes! note: ethiopian haile gebrselassie broke the world record again with a time of 2 hours, 4 minutes, 26 seconds! the guy can fly!

a marker on the sidewalk of where the berlin wall once stood.
berliner mauer means "the berlin wall" in german.

the wall

we met up with the boyd's (friends from budapest) who were in town for the marathon. go ross with your 3 hours + 20 minutes!


we are so glad we went to berlin and highly recommend visiting if you can.