In Berlin 

When we landed in Berlin, we met up with our grandmother (who lives in Texas) and then rented our car and grabbed something to eat at Burger King. After eating we went on a private bike tour back and fourth through east and west Germany.

The bike tour covered all we had wanted to see in the city and more! We saw: the TV tower, the Berliner Dom cathedral, Saint Mary’s church, Checkpoint Charlie, the Opera house, the Holocaust memorial, the site of Hitler’s bunker, the government building, Brandenburg gate, Humboldt University (where Albert Einstein was a teacher), and the book burning memorial.  Most of them were bombed in World War II and rebuilt afterwards.

Berliner Dom Cathedral

The outside of the Berlin Cathedral looks like a Roman Catholic Church. After we went inside, we were surprised to learn that was a Protestant church. Inside were four statues, both on the front and the back of the church, the four on the front were of Luther, Melanchthon, Zwingli and Calvin.

We learned that Luther and Melanchthon, and Calvin and Zwingly had different ideas about the Lord’s Supper. Luther and Melanchthon thought that the bread and the wine become the actual blood and body of Jesus Christ, and Calvin and Zwingli thought that they did it in memory of Him, symbolically. The other four statues were of the four princes that supported the new theology. There was also a very big pipe organ that looked cool. At the end we got to climb what felt like millions of steps to the top of the Berliner Dom. It was totally worth it, the view was fantastic, even though it was a rainy day.

The Berlin Wall

During the bike tour, the guide taught us a little bit about the Berlin wall. She used sidewalk chalk to describe the history. She told us the whole story about how Berlin was divided into two parts, East Berlin (the communist side) and West Berlin (the capitalist side). Because of the communism, the East Berliners didn’t have any freedom and the economy was terrible, so the people from the east started moving to the west. When the leaders from the east side found out that their people were moving over, they came up with the idea of the Berlin wall. The Berlin wall blocked the people on the east side from passing over to the west. The Berlin wall was built on August 13, 1961.

On the east side there were two walls, the outer wall, and the inner wall. In between the two walls was “No Man’s Land”, a dangerous area was filled with guard towers, land mines, sand, and traps. The guide told us a story about a family that worked at a East German government building (located in the No Man’s Land) that wanted to escape. The other people who worked there thought that the family was a loyal eastern family. One night, the man took a hammer tied to a rope and threw it to the other side of the wall where his brother caught it. The whole family was able to zip-line from the government building to the other side of the wall. The guards did see them, but they thought that the plan was so intelligent that they must be spies spying on the west side of the wall. Because of that, their family was able to pass safely into West Berlin.

Eventually, after the Cold War, the wall was torn down on November 9, 1989.

Our trip to Berlin was a great adventure. We made some great memories and learned some history, too.

Legoland Deutschland was a very fun (and my favorite) activity of our trip to Germany. We got there at opening time and left when it closed (the rides close one hour before the rest of the park). Most of the rides were 25-50 mins wait, but all of the rides that I did were fun. My favorite rides were Project X coaster (about 1 minute long), Ninjago “The ride” (5-7 mins long) and the Power Builder (only 45 seconds long).

Project X is a very fast roller coaster with a  pretty steep ramp up and a fast “drop” going down. There were no loops or upside-down flips, but it gives a good adrenaline rush!

The Power Builder is a 2 person ride where you get to choose the level of power with which a robotic arm flips you around.  I don’t recommend going on it more than once if you have a weak stomach.

I think Ninjago “the ride” was my favorite. It was a slow ride on a flat track that is more like an interactive 3D video game contest. The cart had sensors in front of each person, so that when you moved your hands over them towards the screens in front of you, you could “shoot” a ball of power to take out the bad guys from Ninjago. Each person in a team (the group of four on a bench) competes against the others on their team by getting points for each hit/kill in the game; and each team competes against against the teams in other carts by working together to earn points.  When you leave how your team did against the other teams.  When we went with my mom, our cart won first place (see photo below)! By the exit there is a shop where you can buy Lego merchandise. This ride will give you a good  arm workout!  Ninjago World also has a restaurant and a fun “ninja training” play area.

There were many sub-themed areas of the park (Knight’s Kingdom, Little Asia, Miniland, Ninjago World and many more). Miniland is an area of the park with different cities made of Lego on a 20:1 meter scale (Venice, Frankfurt, Berlin, an area of the five tallest buildings in the world, Neuschwanstein castle, many Star Wars scenes, and others that I cannot remember).  But the Berlin television tower had to be done on a 75:1 meter scale because if not, it would be the tallest thing in the park!

Legoland Deutschland was a great experience for the family.

We went to Rome with our grandparents (Mom-mom and Pop-pop) for five days (from September 9 – 13). We stayed in a Prati neighborhood near the Vatican in a comfortable four bedroom three bathroom apartment.

The apartment had a beautiful garden with fountains and turtles and large goldfish. It was interesting to see that turtles ate pieces of bread we gave them, but refused the nuts. The apartment was directly across from a supermarket and that was right on top of  a pizzeria and gelateria.

My favorite activity was gladiator school with the sword fighting and obstacle courses.  We went to the Colosseum one night after closing time and watched the sun set behind it, which was nice because the next day when we went to go inside it was extremely crowded.

Unfortunately it rained for three days straight, but I enjoyed playing in the rain because it does not rain much in where we live in Spain.

My favorite tour was the Vatican tour, because it was very interesting to see the Sistine chapel and Saint Peter’s basilica and some of the different galleries. In Saint Peter’s basilica, all the things that looked like paintings were mosaics, except for one. There were lots of optical illusions of size inside the basilica. One interesting example is the huge altar that is  under a dome. The hole in the dome looked tiny, but the tour guide said that the altar could fit through it with plenty of space. Inside the Sistine chapel, there were dark rectangles on the ceiling and the walls so you could see how it would have looked if it never had been cleaned.

My least favorite activity was the Capitoline museum, since the video guide was pretty much useless because it didn’t tell you where to go next, and it took a long time see just a few things.  I did think some of the statues were cool, like the Lupa she-wolf statue with Romulus and Remus.

Another thing didn’t like about Rome is that everything was crowded.  I guess it is understandable, considering that these are world-famous monuments we saw, but I still didn’t like it and I didn’t like being sick either. One day while we were there I was really feeling sick to my stomach, so after seeing the Vatican I just wanted to lay down somewhere.

One other misadventure was when we missed our first express train to the airport. It was stressful to be in such a rush, but fortunately we were able to take the next train and still arrived at our gate when it was boarding.

All in all, Rome was fun, especially playing with the turtles at our apartment in the rain!