Berlin Part (who knows I lost count)--Last One I Promise!

I'm super lame!  We've been home from Berlin nearly two months and I haven't posted all of the pictures.  This is going to be really long so if you're not interested, it won't hurt my feelings.   I'm not going to say much about the pictures because there are so many.

Below is Checkpoint Charlie.  It was a crossing point between East and West Berlin when the wall was still up.

The Brandenburg Gate was built in the late 1700's.  It was closed once the Berlin Wall was built and reopened once the wall came down.

The following pictures are from the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin.  It was dedicated in 2005.  There are 2,711 slabs of gray concrete.  There are no names or other information on the memorial.  On the third picture you can see that the ground is uneven.  It goes in waves.  It's an interesting feeling to walk through the memorial.

You can see from this picture that the Holocaust Memorial is situated near the Reichstag, the Brandenburg Gate, and the US Embassy is on the right in the photo.

We were able to do a tour of the dome in the Reichstag, where German Parliament meets.  They have a fantastic audio tour of the history of the building itself as well as history of other areas of Berlin that you can see from the amazing viewpoint of the dome.

Here we are outside of Schloss Bellevue, the residence of the President of Germany. Kobe took the photo and didn't get as much of the building as we had hoped.

Below is one of the many palaces in Germany.  We arrived too late to go inside but the outside was pretty amazing.

Here is the new US Embassy.  It was opened in 2008.  I had to get something notarized while in Berlin, but the US Citizens services are in the old embassy.  It was a unique experience going in.  There were massive gates surrounding it.  I had to go through metal detectors and was escorted by an armed guard to the place where I was supposed to be for my appointment.  Not many friendly people working in the embassy.  It was a little scary.

There are so many Dunkin' Donuts in Berlin.  There is one on every corner.  We did get the kids donuts once, but they didn't have a very good selection of ones we are used to.

Kobe is our meat eater so we promised him we would take him to a steakhouse.  We found one and he couldn't have been happier.

We asked for his steak medium, but it came out rare.  He didn't seem to mind though.  We were a little bummed that they wouldn't serve us tap water.  I guess that is pretty common in Europe.  We weren't trying to be cheap.  The kids had drank enough soda on the trip, and the bottled water in German is disgusting!  They add some weird sodium stuff to it and it is barely palatable.  We ordered a large bottle of still water for us to share and I had to force myself to drink my glass.

It rained almost the entire time we were in Berlin.  When we got home from the steakhouse, we were freezing!  Luckily the hotel offered hot chocolate at their bar so we didn't have to brave the cold to make it to another shop.

Our last day was decent weather so we took a walk around the Tiergarten.  They had a fun park for the kids.  The zip line was their favorite, but they enjoyed the little trampoline as well.  Poor Alyssa missed the park because she was crashed out in the stroller.

So now you have the remainder of our trip...kinda.  The shortened version at least. Now I just have to get around to posting the Halloween pictures.  Only a month late on those!