Monday, August 11, 2008

Until next time...

So that is all for now folks. Thanks for joining us and thanks to those who took the time to leave us a little comment. It is back to reality now, which is never easy.

We had a great time on this trip but after 3 weeks if actually feels good to be home. No travels for the next few months then off to Las Vegas for a long weekend to see "M".

Bye for now, Ryan and Jess

Saturday, August 9, 2008

Bienvenue a Montreal

Well we have made it to Montreal and are hanging in the lounge. The 7+ hour flight felt like nothing thanks to the "pods", Jess and I both had a nice nap seeing as how we were up at 5am this morning (that's 8pm back home in Vancouver). The service was quite lovely, a tomato tarte followed by veal cheeks and then a beautiful cheese service and before landing warm cookies and ice cream....all accompanied by as much wine as you wanted.I am currently exploring "Scotch" in the Maple Leaf Lounge and also reintroducing vegetables into my diet. Jess and I have this disgusting habit of eating and drinking like pigs while on holidays, it is basically a diet of wine and cheese for 3 weeks solid. BUT, we are having a lifestyle makeover tomorrow so we have to pack alot in before then..thank God it is all free!!We have a 5.5 hour flight from here and will be home at 4:30 Vancouver time. 1/2 hour until boarding...gotta run and refill my glass!!

Friday, August 8, 2008

One Last Day in Berlin

We are just loving Berlin. It is hip and happening and it just works. Germany is so efficient, traffic moves perfectly, people only cross the street when told to, the trains run exactly on time... you get the drift.

Jess and I woke up this morning after maybe just a hair too much wine with mild tummy and head aches. We are doing a lifestyle makeover when we get home but we are not stopping now.

Once we got mobile we went off to Hamburger Bahnhof which is the modern art museum and you just gotta love the name. Anyhow, we both felt like this photo from the time we woke up until we got to the museum.
Jess wisely chose to dress to blend into the surroundings (an Andy Warhol). Come to think of it, I think those were the only clothes he had left that weren't smelling like Gorgonzola. The following pic is for "Melissavina" as we know she loves bizarre European hairdos!

After the museum we wondered the streets of Berlin marveling at how there just is not a bad neighborhood to be found. Again, we love this place!!!
This afternoon we went for tea at our hotel, something I have always wanted to do but don't think I need to do again.
We are in our wind down phase which is always sad. We will have one last dinner out tonight (we are thinking "Tony Romas", not a joke) which will need to be early because we have to be up very early to catch a 7 am flight to Frankfurt connecting to Montreal and then home (14.5 hours in the air and 20 hours of travel, yippee). The good news is we are on the brand new 777 on Air Canada in Executive First class so the pampering isn't ending just quite yet.

That's all for now. We'll do a wrap up post when we get back to Vancouver. Thanks for joining us on our journey.

Thursday, August 7, 2008

Wine + No Agenda + Angry Lady In The Office Building Across The Street =

Free Day

Good Lord... now I'm second guessing myself... I don't know what's better... to give Ryan free reign to fully book our day or to "play it by ear," something Dr. K is not comfortable with whatsoever. Our day started at 8:15 a.m. with Ryan "whispering" ARE YOU AWAKE?!?! I could already feel the "planning" happening, although he was doing his best to be accommodating:

"So... are you wanting a slow morning or SHOULD WE GO AND DO SOMETHING?" I am really happy that I was well rested and actually wanting to go out or we would have had our annual WW3 (it's only natural. We usually have it every year... but so far, so good... and the forecast is calling for sunny skies). We went back to the Reichstag Building so that we could tour the dome that was added by the last chancellor in 1999. We showered and left immediately to avoid any sort of lineup.
Needless to say, we were not very successful in beating the crowd. To be honest, it really wasn't so bad. We were in line no longer than 1 hour and it was nice being out of the hotel. Once we went through security, we went up the elevator to the top and had a bird's eye view of the city.
Once we were finished (which took about 1/2 an hour), we went to check out the information centre back at the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. Ryan was sure to read EVERY POSSIBLE WORD IN THE ENTIRE BUILDING. I chose not to. Thank god I found a movie of some sort that could keep me entertained until he was finished (WW3 averted, yet again). Now, I don't want to sound like I'm uninterested in the whole historical part... I'm just tapped out at this point. No more reading... no more learning... I'm done. Ryan has a bigger well for such things. Once we were finished, we went back to our hotel:
After that, we were chilled out for awhile and decided to go shopping. We jumped in a taxi and headed toward the area which our concierge previously described as more "hip." The area ended up being a lot better than the "high end" area that we went to before. There seemed to be an H&M on every corner but had a few of our favourites sprinkled in there. We didn't really have money to shop for anything special... except of course, there is always money for a special little someone (aka my GODDAUGHTER) who isn't even born yet. Here are a couple hints mama:
Apart from that, we've really just been hanging out. Typically we both get somewhat depressed on this leg of the vacation. Thanks to our lunch today, Ryan seems to have turned his frown upside down! Mini ice-cream cones filled with ketchup and mayonnaise:
I, on the other hand, didn't need anything more than seeing Ryan try on this helmet at Louis Vuitton:

A Walk To Brandenberg Gate

I especially like the first picture of Lucifer...

When in Rome... er... Berlin...

Chillin' with the locals last night, drinking beer at the Memorial for the Murdered Jews of Europe.

Germany is SOOOO gay!!!

Okay, a sincere apology to all the 100's of fans of HSJ around the world for not posting yesterday (hi mom!!). We did a 7 hour bike tour yesterday and then more walking around after that and just couldn't quite get up the energy to post, we won't let it happen again.

Yesterday we did the bike tour to Potsdam which is 35 km west of Berlin in former east Germany (look at a map, it all makes sense). Now, I know a 35km bike tour sounds impressive but what you do is put your bike on the train and then have a leisurely cycle through the park. Potsdam is the Versailles of Germany where all the Kings of Prussia built there castles for guests, wives or anyone else they wanted to impress.
Here our guide Mariel, who we loved, is explaining the succession of kings in a chalk diagram. Guess what, all the kings were named Frederick so to help us out she identified them by their hairstyles, talk about speaking our language.

The highlight was the palace for Frederick the Great. Fred was a big old homo with a dad who was a military hero (also named Frederick, of course). The dad wanted the son to follow in his footsteps but Fred the son was more into architecture, design and "gasp!" his boyfriend. Dad threw him and his boyfriend in jail and to make a point had the boyfriend beheaded in front of young Fred! Young Fred was eventually released from prison and married a women who he immediately separated from once daddy kicked the bucket. From that point forward Fred saw his wife only once a year just to make sure she was doing okay. Fred found a new man and brought him to live in this palace (Voltaire). It is decorated in the gayest of styles "Rococo" and Fred made it so over the top they called it "Frederikan Rococo". Already we are thinking WE LOVE THIS GUY but the icing on the cake is that young Fred is also famous for introducing potatoes to the German diet and people still bring potatoes to place on his grave. Who would have thunk it , a gay introducing potatoes into our diet, I guess he wasn't into the Atkins/South Beach trend.
This is Frederickan Rococo.
Fred's Grave with potatoes

Just up the street from our hotel and across from the Memorial for Murdered Jews is the memorial for the murdered homos. Our people only get a single block (not 2700) but ours has a movie inside. Check it out, the movie is of two men kissing, full motion. It was kinda fun to watch the reactions of families walking up to take a peek inside.

What you see when you look inside!We'll try and post some more later. We are on our last two days of holidays and we are trying to enjoy every last moment.

Tuesday, August 5, 2008

Berlin Fat Tire Bike Tour

This morning we slept in... and by slept in, I mean it. 8:30 a.m. people. New world record.

We went down to the hotel restaurant and checked out the breakfast menu which was not included in the price of the room. It took about three seconds to realize that we would be spending $40 each so we opted for (cringe) Starbucks which was right around the corner. We then hopped into a taxi and met our Fat Tire Bike Tour guide at the TV tower:
As we were waiting, we looked around and were shocked by the number of senior citizens who had signed up for the same tour. All in all, 50 people were registered and about half of them were over 65. It might not have been an issue but we were picturing a mass of bikes trying to get across a highway on one walk light with some of these people. Scary.

Well, turns out our tour guide did most of the sorting for us. She stood up and starting talking about Berlin having the third highest gay population and how our stop at the beer garden was going to be the highlight of the tour. She went on to explain that we needed to split up and those that wanted to go with her should stay at the front of the pack, and those that wanted to go with the other tour guide should stay back. I couldn't help but see a few of the older people literally turn and walk the other way while Ryan and I clawed and elbowed our way to the front of the pack.
We had a fabulous time, except I made a fatal mistake. Right before we left, the guide asked for a volunteer to make sure s/he stayed at the back of the pack. That way, when we got to the various sites, she would know that once she saw me she would be sure that everyone was there. Well, after several awkward seconds, I said I would. Note to self: Stupid filters down to the back of the line when you're on bike tours. I had a Brazilian version of Paris and Nicole that needed to stop and do their hair (and bike into oncoming traffic) and a couple nervous nellies from Britain that really could have benefited from training wheels. All things considered, we had a great time and I ended up getting an original piece of the Berlin Wall and a couple beers for stepping up.

We hit all of the same places we've shown you already (Jewish Memorial, parliament buildings) but stopped at quite a few more. Our tour guide was really knowledgeable and we learned quite a lot. Here are a few pictures from the day:
Here is what is left of the Berlin Wall. A fence has been erected to protect it because tourists have totally demolished the part of it which is still standing (to take a piece home).
Lunch half way through the tour... Paris, Nicole, and the nervous nellies knew better than to lag behind for the second half of the tour. Note: I have had no alcohol at this point, despite what my eyes are telling you).
Here is the statue that Barack Obama gave his speech in front of a week or so ago.
Back in front of the Parliament Building (where Hitler was given absolute power, back in the day)
Our last stop -- we're not sure. A cathedral with a green dome (Note: we had finished that litre of beer at this point which was pictured above).

Once the tour was finished, we took a taxi back to the hotel, washed up a bit and ran out to check out the shopping district. Lots of stores though we won't be purchasing anything after getting that painting from Budapest which is just fine.

We are absolutely loving the city, the fact that everything is so... efficient and 'right,' and works like it should. Again, it feels like we've been here for a week or so. Hard to believe it's been less than 24 hours. Having said that, it's also hard to believe that we've been away for 19 days (of 23). Unbelievable... except that all of our clothing officially gets the 'smell test' these days. Believe me when I say it's not unbelievable for us that we've been traveling for 19 days (in 35 degrees centigrade) when we smell some of our underwear. Ryan's hair is also getting to the point where he'll need to gel some toothpicks into his spikes to keep them from wilting over. But it's all good. We're loving it.