Ich bin in Berlin

Translation: I'm in Berlin!!
Sorry there's no pictures with this post, but I'm borrowing my friend Kristen's computer until we can figure out how to get mine hooked up to their wireless internet, so only text for now. I'm sitting here on Saturday afternoon in John and Kristen's sunny and spacious Berlin ground-floor apartment. Getting here was a trial of our patience, as travel can be so often. We flew out of Gatwick airport, which is way the heck outside of London, so we took the rather overpriced Gatwick express train and got to the airport two hours before our flight was supposed to leave. Supposed to leave. In fact, by the time our flight was supposed to be taking off, the departure board at Gatwick airport still said "Please wait" where our gate number was supposed to be. Really, what's the point of the "please" when we have no choice...it might as well say "Wait, losers" :) About 20 minutes after we were supposed to leave, the "please wait" was replaced with "Flight closing at gate 111," which started a mad dash to the farthest gate in the terminal. Abbey and I did fairly well in the ensuing "Amazing Race: Gatwick edition" and gained a tremendous advantage over the competition on both escalators as we had no rolling luggage. You see, like Southwest airlines, EasyJet has no assigned seating, so it's every (wo)man for himself. We managed to get two seats together in an exit row, and then proceeded to sit on the tarmac for at least another 30 minutes. We ended up taking off about an hour late, which isn't so bad except our friends were waiting for us on the other end and we got in at midnight, when John had to be up at 5:30! :( But it was such a great feeling to get off a plane in a foreign country and have smiling, familiar faces to welcome you with excitement. We took the train into the heart of Berlin and got to their apartment at about 1:15, I think. Their place is so cute and homey and spacious. I think our guest room could fit three of our London hotel rooms in it! I'll post pictures as soon as I can. We slept until 11:30 (!) this morning and woke up to a wonderful breakfast of fruit and fresh home-made muffins and coffee. How great is that!! Now we've got a load of laundry in the washer and we're off to explore the city with Kristen as our guide! :) I added a link to John and Kristen's blog to my blog, so check it out! They're working with campus ministries in Berlin and have been living here about a year now.

There's no place like London!

Thursday evening we got all dolled up (Amy even wore some make-up! :) and headed to London's West End. It was raining big fat drops, but that didn't dampen our excitement to see Chicago at the Cambridge theater. We did get a bit of a late start and so after picking up our tickets at will-call, we searched around a bit for a place to grab a quick dinner. We happened upon a tiny little cafe on a back street near the theater called "Candy Cakes." They had a nice bistro-type menu, so we got some food and then finished with a wunderbar cupcake that looked like it belonged in the Candyland game. I think that meal was a London highlight--sitting at a sidewalk cafe under an awning, watching people walk by in the rain, enjoying a lovely meal and anticipating Chicago!

The show was amazing. We had second row seats near the center and we could see every facial expression and detail of costume. What a fun experience! The leads were all great (though I'm afraid no "Mama" will ever compare to Queen Latifah) and I love the music of that show so it was hard to not sing along :)

Yma really enjoyed our dinner...she's taken to drinking Perrier in an effort to appear European and she loved the Lemon-White Chocolate-Meringue muffin that the girl at Candy Cakes recommended...it was bigger than she is!

We've perfected fly-by-the-seat-of-our-pants navigation. We wanted to eat breakfast in Kensington Gardens on Friday, so we took an Underground stop that sounded like it was familiar and headed in what we thought was the general direction of the park and we found it! :) We walked down embassy row, found Kensington Palace and then spent the next 3 or 4 hours wandering the length of Kensington and Hyde Parks. It was so beautiful, so green, so peaceful. We played our favorite London game: Mom or Nanny? in the park. :) And we found the Princess Diana memorial fountain which was under construction last time I was there and it was a beautiful and unique fountain...a big circle of granite on a grassy slope.

In the afternoon we went to see A Midsummer Night's Dream at Shakespeare's Globe Theatre. We paid 5 pounds (about $10) to be "groundlings"...uncovered standing-room tickets in the yard of the theater. It was a great way to experience that theater because the actors used the yard quite a bit for entrances and exits and play off the crowd a lot. We stayed for a couple of acts before we headed back to our hotel to heft our packs onto our backs to head to the airport....

I added a link to my pictures!

Try out a link to my pictures on the left side of my blog...

Londontown

It's grey and raining outside...how perfectly London! :)

We headed to the British Museum this morning--that's us reflected in the Rosetta Stone. The lady seems very interested in us. :) I think the highlights for the museum were the Egyptian sculpture and mummies...pretty cool! After lunch at a cute little outdoor cafe, we headed to Trafalgar Square and the National Gallery there. Highlights at the National Gallery were definitely the Van Gogh paintings...I love how much texture they have!

Here we are being tourists :). After the National Gallery, we people-watched in Trafalger Square and then walked down to Buckingham Palace, through St. James' Park and by Big Ben before heading back to our tiny little hotel room, for tiny little free coffees and some rest before we head to the theater tonight! Yma's enjoying riding around in Amy's purse...Amy and Abbey are both so tall that they walk awfully fast for her to keep up!

We're here!

Hello from London! It's roughly impossible to resist speaking with a British accent while here, but my imitation is so horrible that I'm sure it'd be considered an insult, therefore I refrain. We arrived in London around 1:30 and made it to our hotel around 4:00. The hotel is great...on a quiet little back street in Kensington. Our room is roughly the size of a jail cell...6' x 10' we guessed based on Amy's wingspan...but it's clean and safe and has a private bathroom, so nothing to complain about!
We spent our first afternoon in London wandering the streets of Kensington looking for an electronics store to buy a charger cable for Amy's laptop as the converted set we brought along is not meant for small electronics (maybe would have been good if Amy'd checked that before leaving :). We found a store that would have a charger by tomorrow morning for 50 pounds, but thankfully ran into a helpful saleslady who directed us elsewhere. Unfortunately, her accent was so strong that we couldn't understand a word she said. "Was that English?" Fortunately, Amy caught "Queensway" and Abbey caught "Baywater" and we soon put together that those were Underground stops. So we headed to Queensway and after wandering a bit, we happened upon a computer flea market where Amy bought a charger cable for 2.50 pounds! Glad we kept shopping and it's working great! It was a fun way to get to know the neighborhood we're staying in though!
Dinner was fish and chips in a pub on the corner by our Underground stop, of course and now it's early to bed!

Tomorrow!!!

That is a picture of our paper-chain countdown today! One day left! We leave tomorrow! Amy put off packing until the last minute and has just finished. Her pack weighs an unknown amount, but she's pretty sure it's less than the 20kg weight limit that EasyJet imposes for the London-Berlin flight! It's lighter than some packs she's carried up mountains, so I think she can handle it!

Amy complains about the leg room on those long international flights, but she just wrapped me (Yma) up in a plastic sack and stuffed me in her carry-on, so I don't know what she has to complain about!

Today, we purchased tickets to see the musical Chicago while we're in London...we're in the third row!! That's going to be so amazing!

17 days!

The paper-chain countdown that Abbey made is shrinking daily...we're down to 17 days, which is approximately the height of the banister I have it hanging from! We leave May 27th in the afternoon. We head to London for a couple of days first and from there, we're flying to Berlin where we'll be staying with some friends from Washington. My college friends, Ryan and Kelly, will be in Berlin the same weekend, so we'll get to hang out half-way around the world. I love it! There's so much to be done before we leave that I can't quite comprehend how soon we're going!