Berlin & Spain

Leaving Greece~
After 2 days of tearful goodbyes to all our students who were heading out for free travel all over Europe, it was our turn to go. We we taken to the airport by the Myhans on Friday afternoon for our flight to Berlin. It happened that there was a ground-crew strike at the Berlin airport, so our Easy Jet flight was delayed by an hour. It was an easy flight there & we arrived in Berlin around 9:30 pm. After collecting our luggage, we found the metro station & headed toward our hostels metro stop. It was located in what was East Berlin & in order to reach the ground level, we had to go up & then down flights of steps twice. That wouldn’t be any big deal, except we were each pulling a 50 lb. suitcase along with a carry on bag. Yes - we were seeing that we should have shipped a lot more stuff home!! We just weren’t expecting to have to do this many steps! We finally found our hostel & checked in & guess what?? Our room is on the 3rd floor. Again - no big deal - except there’s NO ELEVATOR! Here we go again!! At least we’re getting our exercise!! We hadn’t had a chance to eat anything since lunch, so we headed out into the neighborhood around 10:30 to find food. We hit the jackpot at a wonderful Italian restaurant where we each ordered a main entrée of pizza or spaghetti, drinking water & we all 4 ate for around $10!! That’s unheard of in Europe!!
Next morning , Saturday, we got up & headed to breakfast provided at our hostel. We jumped on the metro & headed into town. We got a ticket that allowed us to travel unlimited for 2 hours, so we rode to the other side of town to get a feel for where things were & see the city a little. We decided to check out the sights & found the Check Point Charlie stop where the East & the West faced off & the Brandenburg gate. We also visited Museum island where we saw the Gallery Museum & Pergamon Museum. The Pergamon museum had wonderful, huge displays of the Alter to Zeus as well as the gates of Ishtar. They were really something to see. We probably would have appreciated all this even more if we hadn’t just spent 3 months looking at other great ruins!
We found a Dunkin Donuts at one of the metro stops, so had to indulge in a donut for tonights dessert. The girls thought we deserved a treat after spending hours walking through 2 museums! Yes,, we’re about museumed out!
We turned in for an early (anything before midnight these days) night & got ready for our last day in Berlin.
Next morning we set out determined to find “the wall”. We finally found it as we visited the “Topography of Terror” exhibition which was on the location where the 3rd Reicht headquarters had been. We soon realized we were just a few blocks from Checkpoint Charlie where we had been the day before. We just had a half day today as we had to get back to the hostel, collect our luggage, & head to the airport. We all agreed we really liked Berlin & would like to spend more time here.

Hola! Hablo Espanol??
Sunday - We’re off to Southern Spain!! Our flight took us from Berlin to Malaga, Spain where we arrived Sunday around 4:30 pm. We had already reserved a car for the week so all we had to do was load up & find our resort. We had no trouble finding the Club La Costa resort & were soon settled in. We have a 2 bedroom condo that is first floor with a small pool only steps from our doors. Our condo is on a bluff overlooking the ocean, although since we’re on the first floor, you can’t really see the coastline from here. Our first morning, we just hung out around the pool & relaxed. It is a little cool & breezy here but the pool is heated, so it’s at least tolerable. In the afternoon, we headed out to town to eat lunch & buy groceries. We found a wonderful Chinese restaurant. I said we should have started years ago taking pictures of ourselves in front of all the Chinese restaurants we’ve eaten in as we’ve eaten Chinese all over the world!! That afternoon, while the girls watched TV, Vann & I walked around the resort & down the beach a little way. We’ll have to do more exploring later.
Gibralter~
On Tues, we decided to head out to find Gibralter. We didn’t have a map except a very simple one that pointed the direction, so we took off in that direction! After driving about 20 minutes, we realized Savannah didn’t have her passport, so we had to turn around to get it. Back in the car & an hour later, we’re wondering if we’re going the right way as no signs include Gibralter in them. BUT - there’s really only 1 major road going this way, so we continue on. Soon we see a sign for Gibraltar - 7 km. Yea! We walked around the town of Gibralter, which is a British ruled area (everything in English - another YEA!). We opted not to spend the $100 for our family to do a tour of the rock since the girls weren‘t all that interested, ,but just enjoyed it from below. Maybe we’ll return another time to see it without the kids.
The rest of the week has been spent basically chilling out around the pool & getting a little sun! The weather has been beautiful the last half of the week with clear, sunny skies. It is really beautiful here - it reminds me a lot of Greece with the mountains going down to the sea with small towns dotted all along the coastline. We even have an old castle just down the beach from our hotel!!
Sunday, April 29 - We checked out of our resort around noon & had some lunch before our 3:30 flight from Malaga to Madrid. In Madrid, we collected our bags & headed to find a storage area for the bags so we could go into town & look around. After dragging them to the far end of the airport, we found that all the large lockers at that location were taken - so we dragged them all back to the other end to find enough large lockers to hold all our bags. So - finally around 6:30 pm we were heading into town. We found the metro to be really easy to get around on. We stopped in the center of town & just started looking around. There are lots of really neat older buildings - very ornate - & great statues. We didn’t really have any plans, so basically just wondered the streets. We came upon a Hard Rock Café, so had a relaxing American style dinner!! We decided we were really just tired, so headed back to the Airport where we spent the night until time for 4 am. Check in for our 6 am flight out. The flight was very smooth - no problems, thankfully. We arrived back home around 6 pm on Monday night after having gotten about 4 hrs. of sleep in the last 48 hours!! We were exhausted, but glad to be back home sleeping in our own beds!!
I’ll get the pictures from Berlin & Spain on soon!