Hallo everyone!
We took a (horrible) Ryanair flight from Edinburgh to Berlin on Monday morning, but it’s been easily forgotten by the great time we’ve had in Germany’s capital. We’ve spent the past 4 days exploring the city and both know we want to come back- it’s an amazing place.
We did a little of everything, trying to cram as much touristy and non-touristy stuff in as possible: Brandenburger Tor, the Jewish memorial, Unter den Linden, the Tiergarten; visits on ‘Museum Island’ to a few of the amazing antiquities museums; drinks at a Bier Garten; a bike tour of Potsdam; swimming in Schlachtensee, and much more. It’s been great, if only we had more time!
We’ve been lucky enough to stay at good family friends’ apartment in the city, which made the trip even better. We cooked dinner for ourselves for the first time in 3 weeks Tuesday night. Very strange.
Tomorrow we catch an early morning ‘InterCity’ express train to Amsterdam. So until next post(card), auf wiedersehen!

A photo essay featuring Josh in Great Britain’s iconic phone booths.

Enjoy.

Welcome to Scotland! On Friday we drove from York to Edinburgh, with a stop about halfway to walk part of Hadrian’s Wall. We could tell we were farther north, in this wild, rocky, windswept landscape. On Saturday we took the train to St Andrews, which was its usual chilly, grey, windy “self”; we took Meg’s favorite walk out the pier and along the Scores, and along the West Sands where the opening scene from Chariots of Fire was filmed. Today in Edinburgh we explored the Royal Mile and National Museum before a lovely afternoon tea in the Balmoral Hotel to a live pianist who played The Beatles, David Gray, and the Imagination song from Willy Wonka! It’s early to bed for our 6am flight out of the UK. Slainte!

Well, neither of us are technically ‘real’ New Yorkers, but we’re close enough.
Before leaving the Cotswolds area yesterday we stopped by a lavender farm in Snowshill for a bit of pre-roadtrip frolicking (pictures below), then made our way up to The North (as all the road sides so aptly put it) with a quick stop in Stratford-upon-Avon for lunch. We got into York in the early evening and went for a stroll around town. Most of the old medieval city walls are still standing, and you can walk along many sections – which of course we did.
Today we took a lengthy free city-run tour of the City which ended up running over two hours (but was very interesting – there’s a lot of history in the city). Next stop: the National Rail Museum (free admission). To end the day, we attended Evensong at York Minster, an amazing old cathedral rivaled only by Westminster in scale. Also, Eddie Izzard is totally right about the Anglican Church. With all that music and singing, you’d think things could be a little more upbeat. I guess the Church of England is the emo scene of the religious world.
Tomorrow we head up to Edinburgh, with stops at Hadrian’s Wall and wherever else strikes our fancy!

Welcome to the “Midlands” of England: rolling forests and pastureland dotted with tiny towns that seem to have been lost in time, where the houses have names instead of street numbers and only one car at a time can fit on the road. Josh is driving our rental car – and doing quite well – and we’re glad we have it to explore (or at least drive through) as many of these hamlets as possible. We took a walking tour of Chipping Campden today, and braved the rain so Meg could see the ancient yew trees that (supposedly) inspired Tolkien’s doors of Moria. We finished the day with a leisurely half-hour stroll down a quiet footpath to a pub serving excellent local beer…and managed to walk it off on the return trip to the car to drive back to our quaint B&B.