Europe - We Finally Made It!
In the end, 2022 was a great travel year for our family. We made two trips – both international (Canada counts!). Michelle and I took a trip to Toronto in the summer and really enjoyed exploring a new city for us. But the big, really big trip turned out to be our trip in October to Europe. My son decided to study abroad for the Fall semester after his last co-op position in Indianapolis over the summer. At first Michelle and I did not agree to him doing that – we were very apprehensive of him going so far away and in a region of the world where war is tragically occurring with Ukraine and Russia. We changed our minds and off he went to study in Berlin, Germany! We are very proud of how well he has acclimated to Berlin. After he had been there for about 6 weeks we decided to come for a visit. A little history first…I had initially planned a trip to Europe for May of 2020. Well the pandemic hit in March of 2020 and we quickly saw that trip cancelled. At the time Michelle, Nick, Brett and I were all going to visit Paris and stay in an Air BnB across from Notre Dame. I had done my usual planning and had most of the trip all mapped out. So for this trip I decided to split it into two parts. Berlin for 5 days and then Paris for 7 days. Before talking about the trip, I did want to mention about how long it has taken me to make it to Europe. First let me say I realize that many people have never been to Europe or even to the opposite coast of their own country – therefore I am very blessed and fortunate. Nonetheless I am amazed at how many young people under 25 I speak to who have been overseas already. The world has definitely become smaller for the youth. I am 53 now as I write this and it has taken until now for me to make it. I feel like I have missed out. All I can do now is try and make up for lost time by not wasting any time now.
If you are wondering, the picture at the top of this page is the inside of Sainte-Chapelle in Paris. Unbelievably beautiful.
In this trip journal entry I am going to give some general overviews and thoughts of our experiences but I have written more details specific to our stops on the trip’s location pages.
- Berlin -
We left Ohio on a Tuesday and via Chicago we landed on Wednesday morning in Paris. I flew into Paris because our return home would ultimately be from Paris. So we caught a flight from Paris up to Berlin Wednesday afternoon. Then it was time to see if I could figure out the Berlin train system. The first station where we had to switch trains had three platforms and it was near rush hour. The trains were crowded and we had all of our suitcases as I tried to figure it out. We jumped on what I thought was the correct train and as I stood there watching the first station come by, I realized we were going the wrong way. Oops…the look on Michelle’s face – she wasn’t happy. It had been a long day but we then figured the trains out and made it to our hotel in the Mitte district of downtown Berlin. A nice benefit of already having Brett here in Berlin is was that he had mastered the train system. I was very impressed with how he quickly figured out what train to get on where and where the stations are.
Side note, we flew over on the Boeing 787 “Dreamliner” and I will say that it was quite a plane and a relatively smooth flight (I think it was around an 8 hour flight).
We stayed at the Monbijou Hotel. The hotel room was very small (even smaller than a NYC hotel room) but it was nice and we really enjoyed our stay there. The location was great. Easy access to everything. Brett met us at the Hackescher Market Train Station stop right by our hotel.
Hackescher Market Station
Views of and from the Monbijou Hotel
While in Berlin/Germany I would group our destinations as follows:
- Central/Downtown Berlin
- Potsdam
- City of Dresden
- A few Berlin suburban areas
Central / Downtown Berlin
Central/Downtown Berlin is enjoyable to explore for a day or two. We crossed the bridge to Museum Island and you can’t help but be drawn to the Berlin Cathedral. Until I reviewed some of my pictures afterward, I did not realize how massive this cathedral is. If you visit be sure to work your way all the way to the top and go outside for 360 degree views from the dome. But I will warn you, there are a lot of steps to the top. After a number of flights there was a sign warning you that if you of the number of steps still remaining to reach the top. I’ve always prided myself on being reasonably in shape but I will tell you it did take extra effort to get there (could be me getting older 🙂)
I hope you enjoy the video below. I took it of us going down – even as sped up 5x as I think it gives you a feel for the number of steps (which is much easier than going up)!
The Berlin Cathedral Steps at 5x Speed
We walked the central street of Unter den Linden. From Wikipedia “Unter den Linden is a boulevard in the central Mitte district of Berlin, the capital of Germany. Running from the City Palace to Brandenburg Gate, it is named after the linden trees that line the grassed pedestrian mall on the median and the two broad carriageways.” You can and we did spend a day just walking this street and seeing its sites with the most notable being the Brandenburg Gate towards the west end. Right beyond the Brandenburg gate is the Reichstag building, which houses the German parliament.
The Berlin Wall
We ventured out to the East Side Gallery to view this section of the Berlin Wall. It is painted by 118 artists with images that celebrate the demise of the wall. I enjoyed walking along sections of it and viewing the artwork. I remember when the wall was torn down 2 years after I graduated high school in November 1989. It was of course huge news at the time and I can remember how excited and happy the German people were. As I stood feet away from it I tried to imagine how desperately the East Germans wanted to cross beyond the wall to the democratic West German side.
Potsdam
We visited Potsdam which is a city of approximately 180,000 people located 16 miles to the southwest of the Berlin city center. We went the there specifically to visit the Sanssouci Palace and then the New Palace. We rode the train (S-Bahn) there and it was well worth the trip. I would recommend it to anyone interested in seeing palaces like these in a beautiful park. In this case we did not go inside either but our walk in the park that contains both palaces was great.
Dresden
We rode the train a couple hours south to the city of Dresden. I looked forward to seeing what the country of Germany looked like outside of the huge city of Berlin. I was a little surprised at how rural this stretch of Germany seemed to be. It was very flat and seemed to be similar to the rural areas where I am here in the American Midwest.
I would recommend taking this day trip to Dresden. It feels very different than Berlin. I really knew nothing about Dresden before our planned trip. I read about the Allied bombing in 1945 during WWII and could not believe the pictures of the damage.
It is amazing how this city has been rebuilt in the 77 years since. You can read more at Wikipedia.
- Paris -
I am trying to figure out where to start when talking about Paris. I have read and seen many pictures of Paris and most of them romanticize the city. I was hoping I would not be disappointed now that I was finally going to see it in person. Our flight from Berlin arrived at Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport in the rain. We purchased our train tickets and boarded a very crowded regional train with all of our luggage and headed to our stop in the heart of Paris. We had a fairly short walk from our metro station to our Air BnB in the Latin Quarter. Even though it was sprinkling rain on us as we walked near our place we walked right by an obviously very old church that had warm yellow lit windows in the dusk of evening. A picture of this church and moment is below. I loved how the windows lit up with the warm light.
In my eyes the city is incredible. I loved it – definitely my favorite large city I have visited. From the Haussmann Architecture to ancient churches, palaces, museums, cafes and the even more incredible in person structure – The Eiffel Tower, there was something new to discover at every turn. We were very fortunate that my daughter and son-in-law Kelsey and Jake were also able to come over for the Paris portion of our trip. I really would not have dreamed we would all be able to be together to experience Paris. You will see a picture below that Jake took of our family. At the time of the trip we had lost Nick 2 years earlier but as you see in the pic Michelle is wearing her very special necklace that has his fingerprint on it and his handwriting on the back saying “Love You – Nick”. He should have and would have been here with us and I know he would have had a great time. We miss him terribly.
We stayed 6 1/2 days and used every moment of them to take in all the sites and locations we visited. I am already mentally planning to return to Paris before too long.
One quick comment – a unique experience for me was waking up and walking out the door in the morning and smelling the freshly baking pastries in the bakeries (boulangerie) wafting through the morning air. It smelled so good and I couldn’t wait to stop and get a croissant to go with our morning lattes. A little factoid – bakeries must bake their bread on-premises to hold the title of ‘boulangerie’ in France.
I have written my thoughts about many of the Paris Locations on their pages in this site. I will write more here in the this journal at some point.
In the end, Paris more than lived up to my expectations and presently is my #1 trip of all of them I have been on. If you have been considering visiting Paris, I really encourage you to go and experience this fantastic city.
Coffee, Coffee, Coffee
As you would expect from us, we stopped every day, usually twice a day, at coffee shops I had marked to discover before our trip. Thankfully the coffee scene is very healthy in Paris and we had some top notch lattes and flat whites.
Between all of the site seeing, each day I really looked forward to our coffee shop stops in both Berlin and Paris – along with incredible pastries. I want to know why we don’t have croissants here in America like they do in Paris – seriously!
Walking Tracks
I use an app (Gaia GPS for iPhone) on my phone to record the GPS tracks of everywhere I walk when on vacation. I do this so I can later use the recorded GPS track to geo-tag my pictures from my mirrorless camera. I found an application named Route Generator that allows me to animate the tracks on a map.
I think it is fun to watch these little clips to see where we went each day.
I suggest you click the little full screen icon in the bottom right corner of the video.
