Berlin April 14-17

Over the long Easter weekend, we decided to make a visit to Berlin.  Berlin has been on our list since we moved to Europe, and we finally fit it in the schedule.  We arrived late Friday night and needed dinner.  We headed to the local Burgermeister for a burger.  It is simple greasy burger menu served to loud rock music. We were the only patrons not wearing black.  It was probably the best burger we have had in Europe and a real slice of the counter culture vibe in Berlin.

Saturday we started with a free walking tour (Sandemans). We had a very knowledgable guide.  The stop at the memorial to the murdered Jews of Europe was especially memorable.  After the tour finished, we headed to Markthalle Neun for lunch.   The market was a fun up-scale street food market hall with great craft beer to boot.  After lunch we trekked over to the East Side Gallery. This is the longest intact section of the Berlin Wall.  It is still painted with some of the original graffiti or renewed versions of the originals.  It was one of our favorite stops for the weekend and it was amazing to see the history.  For dinner, we headed to Prater, a classic German Biergarten.  Of course, the weather wasn't warm enough for sitting in the garten but the beer and food were excellent.

Brandenburg Gate

Markthalle

An old East German Trabant

East Side Gallery

Memorial to murdered Jews of Europe

The biggest schnitzel

Sunday we had a great breakfast at Barcomi and then poked around the Berliner Fernsehturm (space needle-type tower) and Alexanderplatz.  We headed back over to Brandenburg Tor, the Reichstag building, tier garden and memorial to the murdered Jews of Europe to take the sites we saw on the tour in at a more leisurely pace.  Apparently, the doner kebab was invented in Berlin, so we tried the supposed best one in town for lunch. We waited nearly an hour in line to get our hands on a doner at Mustafas and it was worth it!  We for sure consider it the best doner we have had!

The Reichstag building (Parliament)

Obligatory photo of Checkpoint Charlie

After our huge and long awaited lunch, we headed to Templhof airport.  The airport is now closed, but the land has been turned into a park since 2008.  It was kind of creepy to see an old huge abandoned airport, but fun to walk around the old runways.

On our last day, we tried to head over to the famed Bikini Berlin shopping building but it was closed.  Although we obviously couldn't see much inside,  it looks like a cool use of renewed urban space. Plus you can enjoy a free view of the baboon pin at the zoo from the terrace!  Then on to lunch for a good traditional meal at Schwarwaldstuben before having to head to the airport to return to Belgium.

Berlin frustrated us at times with rainy/cold weather and a lot of shops being closed for the holiday weekend.  However, despite all that we really enjoyed our stay in this historically interesting and now very hip city. We are thinking of making a return trip when the weather is better!

Spring 2017

As a catch up, below are a few fun events from this Spring from in and around Antwerp.

Ghent Urban Trail10k - Molly did a 10k race through the city of Ghent as a warm up for the Antwerp 10 mile race she ran later in the Spring.  She ran in Ghent with our friends Emily and Luke and finished on the famous Velodrome!

Pre race photo

Running through a nightclub!

End of the race in the Velodrome

Our photographer and personal cheerleader showed up

Post race beers!

Tour of Flanders (Ronde van Vlanderen) - This annual professional bike race starts in a different location every year, but always ends in the same village.  This year the start was in Antwerp, so we watched the riders take off, then headed down to Oude Kwaremont.  The course has the riders pass this old town 3 times on cobblestone paths.  It was a great day for cycling and spectating.  We were able to get closer to the cyclists each time they past.  A Belgian pulled ahead in the final moments to win, so it was an exciting conclusion to a fun day.

Jammed in the car on the way to Oude Kwaremont

Antwerp 10 miles - Molly ran the race with the Avery team this year.  She shaved a whole 4 minutes off our time from last year!  It was a tough race but she finished and might run again this year... ;)

Tapes Runners ready to race

Racing for the finish

London March 10-12

We are really getting too far behind on blogging these days, so we are switching to a more summary format. Apologies to all our fans that have loved our cutting humor and powerful insights, but we want to make sure we keep some memories without wearing ourselves out typing.

• As our first holiday outside of Belgium this year, we took a half day and went to London for the weekend.

• We stayed in the East End for a chance to experience a part of the town we hadn't seen before. Qbic hotel: funky themed "green" hotel with modular "cube" bed and bath  

• Friday night dinner: Meat Mission. Greasy and spicy burgers and hotdogs. A little taste of home aka gut bomb

• First East End observations: We weren't hip enough to be there and wow, hipsters like to get their hair cut (almost as many barber shops as pubs)

• Saturday was supposed to start with a food tour, but our guide called off sick and we got bumped to the lunchtime tour so we took a walk to see the Borough market and Shakespeare's Globe.

Borough Market

• Borough market: Neat street market nestled under a mass of overpasses. Great street food and treats.

• Shakespeare's Globe: we saw it from the outside...not much more we can say than that.

• We took a nice walk back to the hotel across the Millennium bridge and past St. Paul's Cathedral.

• Up next was the beginning of our food tour! We started at Spitalfields market and toured the gastronomical offerings of the East End. 

• St. John's for a bacon sandwich (great bread and homemade "ketchup" - more like apple butter), The English Restaurant for bread and butter pudding (Tyler's favorite stop), then a French cheese place, then Poppies for traditional fish and chips (fried perfection), Pride of East End pub for ale and cider, Aladdin for three curries on the famous Brick Lane curry capital, Bagel Bake for the classic salted beef bagel and mustard (perfect mix of flavors - The winner for Molly), last stop: Pizza East for salted Carmel tart

• Hung around a few hip pubs for the rest of the afternoon

• Saturday evening: Book of Mormon at Prince of Whales Theater (great production and lots of laughs)

• Finished the evening with (you guessed it) a late night snack at Wahaca, a local Latin cuisine chain (nailed the Guac and tacos) 

• Sunday morning: the line around the block prevented us from eating at The Breakfast Club, but St. John's turned out to be a great plan b

• Olympic Park was the rest of our day (with a pit stop for Shake Shack milkshakes).  We rented city bikes and toured the park grounds. The velodrome was especially fun to see.

• Biked back across town on the CS2 (the "cycle super highway") to pick up our bags at the hotel and catch the train.

• Engineering works gave us some heartburn, but we made out train just in time

• Summary: Amazing second time experience in London. We really enjoyed staying outside the touristic centre and getting to eat and drink like a local. Also, the theatre experience did not disappoint. As per usual, we were left wishing we had another day to enjoy this great city.

Ardennes Part 2 Feb. 10-12

In Febuary, we planned another adventure to the South of Belgium to the Ardennes.  The group changed a bit but the overall goals did not.  We wanted to hang in cool cottage/cabin, hike a bit and visit a brewery.  And, we succeeded!  We all arrived on Friday night and enjoyed the warm fire in our Airbnb while catching up.  Before bed, we did our very best snow dances in hopes we would get some wintery weather for our hike the next day.  We woke up to 1-2 inches of prime snowball making snow.  We enjoyed a great American breakfast of bagels and cream cheese before heading out for our hike.  We had planned a 10 km (6ish mi) hike but of course ended up turned around a bit and completed about 12 km (7.5 mi).  It was beautiful to walk through the quiet, snowy woods. 

Hiking

The perfect snowball fort

By the end of the hike, we had worked up quite the appetite and headed to Bastogne for lunch.  Bastogne is where a significant part of the Battle of the Bulge took place during World War II.  We went to a restaurant full of war memorabilia, and they served a beer created based on an old war story.  Airborne beer is served in a ceramic helmet to signify an American soldier who brought beer to an ailing friend in his infantry helmet.  Some of us sampled the beer, and we all enjoyed a hot lunch after our snowy walk.  On our way back to the cabin, we stopped at the War Memorial outside of Bastogne.  The snow was coming down very hard during our visit.  It was emotional to be at the memorial and imagine being in that sort of difficult weather during the Battle.  

Airborne beer

The taste testers

World War II memorial

After our visit to the memorial, we headed back to our Airbnb for some R&R.  We had pulled pork for dinner and spent the evening hanging out and playing games.
On Sunday morning, we headed out for our last stop before heading home, Brewery Achouffe, the brewer of La Chouffe beer.  We had a nice Belgian brasserie lunch before heading on our tour.  It was an interesting tour with the history of the brewery and brewing process which ended with a tasting.  We all spent some time and money in the gift shop before heading home.  It was another successful weekend in the Ardennes with friends!

Achouffe brewery