Gran Canaria |Canary Islands

Where to even begin with the trip to the Canary Islands....well our train was late so we missed the last bus to the airport. So we were stranded in Frankfurt for the night with no where to go. At the last minute we decided we were better off getting a room in Frankfurt to sleep for 3 hours even if we would have to get up and catch the bus at 3 am. After a long night and a five hour flight to the islands I get three calls from the hotel from the night before saying the curtains from our room are gone...what the heck do they think I would do with stolen curtains?! And the flight back was a nightmare. Some kid with hippie, hands off parents flooded the bathroom on the plane and stood on my arm rest for half of the flight. Once we arrived back in Frankfurt we had to spend the night in the train station because every hotel in Frankfurt was full for a fair. Anyhow, everything in between was GREAT.
      We spent the days at the beach and the pool and I managed to read nearly 3 books. We spent one afternoon in the sand dunes of Maspalomas. From the bottom all you can see is sand and it seems to stretch on forever. At one near miss John nearly lead us sraight into a nudist beach. Thank goodness we were able to swerve right just in time to miss it.

Bologna

Bologna was a bit of a shorter trip though still amazing. Bologna is the city of towers. You can't walk a city block without finding a new tower or church or city gate or plaza. And the rumor is true, pizza is sooo much better in Italy.

Madrid

Audrey Hepburn lied to me. The rain in Spain does NOT stay mainly on the Plain. It rained like crazy our first day in Madrid. Never the less it turned out to be a fantastic (and mostly sunny) trip. We saw two MVRDV buildings and a Morphosis building and countless historical buildings.

MVRDV

MVRDV

Plaza de Mayor

Morphosis

Berlin

Basically 7 days of awesome and exhaustion. Everything from the Brandenburg Gate to Frank Gehry to Berlin Wall. Pictures say a whole lot more than words in this case I think so here you go.

Holocaust Museum |Peter Eisenman

 DZ Bank |Frank Gehry

Neue National Galerie |Mies van der Rohe

Jewish Museum |Daniel Libeskind

Berlin Wall

Brandenburg Gate

Friedberg

Good grief where do I even begin...It's been forever sense I updated and its hard to remember everything so I'll be brief, but here we go...

Friedberg is the town where my grandmother grew up. I was able to meet my uncle there and find her house. We decided that after coming so far, what the heck, we might as well knock on the door. It was an elderly couple who spoke absolutely no English. So unfortunately my level one German classes didn't quite cut it. They seemed to think that we thought my grandmother still lived there or and subconsciously blocked the front door. Oh well! It was still awesome to see the house she grew up in and the bomb shelter she used during the war. Here are a few pictures.