Berlin : Segway Tour, Ritter Factory & The Zoo

Segways were invented by Dean Kamen who is from NH, which is cool because I am from NH, but to be honest, I think segways look kind of silly... especially if you see a tour of them- a long line of segways driving down the sidewalk...

BUT, since I didn't know anyone in Berlin, I figured it would be okay to take a Segway tour- after all, you get to see way more stuff because you can go so much further in a shorter amount of time.

So Bob took the day off from work and we all went to Berlin for a Segway tour.

It was a two hour drive to Berlin, and we were almost late because of a "stau" (traffic jam), but we made it on time.  The first 15 minutes or so were Segway practice.  But before we could even get on, we had to don extremely attractive helmets.  Here I am, ready to go.

It didn't take long to get used to the Segway riding, even though it was a little wobbly at first- by the end of the tour we were spinning and going backwards and slaloming and it was great!

Our tour guide was Charlie, and he was a lot of fun.  The tour was 4 hours, but he was exciting to listen to and instead of boring facts, we were told interesting stories.  I actually ended up learning a lot about Berlin.

My favorite parts of the tour were the Berlin Wall, where the wall used to be, and the Holocaust Memorial .

Berlin Wall

where the wall used to be

Holocaust Memorial

This is a picture of us on the Segways.

Don't we look COOL??

Our tour was pretty small- there were 5 of us and the tour guide.  The other two guys on the trip were from Israel.  They were show-offs and kept making inappropriate jokes and comments, so I would have to say they were the worst part of the tour.

However, the funniest part of the tour was when one of them wasn't looking and rode the Segway over a barrier and fell off.  Don't worry though- he wasn't hurt, and I'm not THAT mean.  He did kind of deserve it though.

Here is a photo of all of us.

After the Segway tour, we hit the Ritter Sport Chocolate Factory.  

If you have never had Ritter Sport, it is probably one of the awesomest chocolates there is.  E-mail me and I will bring you some- its THAT good.  At the factory, you could buy just about every flavor ever, anything you might want with a Ritter Sport logo, and you could even make your own flavor! (well, kind of- it wasn't as cool as it sounds).  We also walked through a tiny tour of how the chocolate was made.  Here is Bob at the end.

We bought a bunch of chocolate (and of course had to taste it!) and then headed to the zoo.  

Surprisingly, the Segway tour made us pretty tired.  I think the hardest part was staying still when you didn't want to move- even a little wiggle made the Segway go forward or backward!  

The zoo was lots of fun and the weather was great.  My favorite animals were the giraffes and the kangaroos.

It was a great trip to Berlin.  After all that traveling I might need to sleep for a whole week... 

Königstein Castle

Today we got up and walked to the train station to take the train along the Elbe River to Königstein.  All the towns along the Elbe are really cute, but Königstein had a castle/fortress.

When we arrived, to get to the castle we had to take the "Festung Express" (a bus), a silly train that wasn't really a train because it had wheels and drove on the road, and a giant elevator!

There wasn't a whole lot of "castle" to see, aside from this really cool stone entrance way that climbed a hill from the base of the enclosure wall.

me, at the top of the hill

BUT, it was a gorgeous day and the views from the top of the Castle enclosure were beautiful.  We walked around the entire wall and took pictures the whole time!  It was like having a 360° view of the surrounding area.

Back to Dresden

Copenhagen was great, but we were definitely tired!!
After a few morning photos, we boarded the plane and headed back to Dresden.  It was nice to be home!

This evening, we visited the Festung before heading to dinner.  The Festung is the wall that used to protect Dresden.  We saw the city gate, the guard rooms, where the moat was, and many other old looking stone things.

After our Festung exploring we were hungry, so we took the tram down the river to the Blaues Wunder bridge

 

and ate outside on the river at the Shiller Garten.

 After dinner, we still had a little energy so we took the bergbahn up to the top of the hill near the river to look at the city at night.  Unfortunately, it looked much nicer in person than in our photos.  But here's a picture of me and Bob on the bergbahn!

Copenhagen : Day 3

After a free buffet breakfast (and making some sandwiches to take with us for lunch) we were off on "Museum Day".  On our list of places to see were the Statens Museum and the Louisiana Museum.  Both were supposed to have some great modern art.







We started out at the Statens Museum.  It was a really big building!  We were a little early, so we had time to fool around with the panoramic setting on my mom's camera.

This museum had a lot of artwork by famous artists.  I was most excited to see this one:

Extra credit if you can name the artist.

Did you get it right?  Click here to find out who it is.

This reminded me of some artwork the third graders did at the end of the year last year.

I was also excited to see a real painting by one of my most favorite artists.  Can you guess who it is?  Click here to see if you're right.

His portraits are a little abstract- the third graders also created self-portraits in the style of this artist at the beginning of the year. 









There was also a really cool installation exhibit at this museum.  There were lots of different types of balls- most of them inflatable, hanging in a giant foyer.

 

After spending an hour or so at the Statens Museum, we hopped on the train for a 30 minute ride up the coast of Denmark.  We ended up in the town of Humlebæk to visit the Louisiana Museum.  The museum was AWESOME!  It was a really cool building (architecturally) and had a view out in the gardens across the sea to Sweden.  In the gardens there were lots of Alexander Calder sculptures.  I had a good time standing next to them for some photos... 

 And even trying to be a sculpture:

The Louisiana Museum had an incredible Anselm Kiefer exhibition, but we weren't allowed to take pictures :(

After a few hours in the museum we were ready to head back to Copenhagen.  We ate our tasty sandwiches from breakfast on the train.

After a short break at the hotel (and some picture taking)

We went on a walk to see the residence of the royal family.

They had some guards walking around.  They were hard to catch standing still for a picture!

We'd had a busy day, so we walked back to Nyhavn for dinner along the canal.  After an excellent pizza at a cute Italian Restaurant (Danish dinners seemed too fishy), we took a stroll on one of the pedestrian walking streets, then headed back to our hotel for our last night in Copenhagen.

Nyhavn

Copenhagen : Day 2

Friday morning started out with a beautiful sunrise outside our window-- EVEN THOUGH it was supposed to rain :)

There were even boats outside our window on the canal.

Copenhagen is a beautiful city and we were lucky enough to stay near one of the nicest canal areas, Nyhavn.  It's famous for its restaurants (though they're very expensive).  It looks a lot like Amsterdam-- which reminded me of the awesome Canal Houses the fourth graders made last year!  

Denmark is supposed to be the country where danishes originated, so we had to find some authentic Danish pastries for breakfast.  We found a bakery called Reihn. Van Hauen.  I have to say that the actual Danish "danish" wasn't that great, but there was this cream filled chocolate covered one that was AWESOME!  We walked around for a while (to let our breakfast go down), and decided while it was nice out we should take a boat tour of the canals.

The boat tour was really awesome, though it was also REALLY cold!!  We learned a bit of history about Copenhagen, but unfortunately, the pictures weren't as nice as they might have been if it hadn't gotten cloudy :(

Here's a picture from the canal tour:

After the canal tour we were so cold we had to go back to the hotel to warm up!!

Next, it was off to the Carlsberg Brewery for a brewery tour (and hopefully a snack!)

The Carlsberg Brewery was a pretty cool place.  You could take a self-guided tour (similar to the one at the Heineken Brewery in Amsterdam), so we really didn't get to see the actual beer being made, but it was fun anyway.

The coolest part of the tour was a room with the largest beer collection in the world.

That's a lot of beer!

After a fun-filled tour we stopped in at the bar for a free drink and some incredible grilled cheese sandwiches.

That concluded our stay at the Brewery, but right nearby was supposed to be the Cisterne, an old water resevior under Søndermarken, which has been converted into a glass museum.  I love all art museums, but my mom was excited to see this one too since she does glass work herself.

Of course, it proved to be a difficult place to find, as it was in the center of a park and it wasn't a large building or anything... in fact, it didn't look like a museum at all.  Here is the entrance.

But after we found it, we were glad we kept looking.  (We even had to ask for help from an older gentleman that only spoke Danish!!)

It was probably the coolest museum I've ever been in, and being an art teacher, I've been to a lot of museums!

It was really dark and damp and all the glass works were lit by spotlights.

 

I didn't want to leave, but we didn't really want to sleep there, so after walking through it three or four times, we headed back into the main part of town.

That night, we headed to Tivoli Gardens, the second oldest amusement park in the world.  It was lit up beautifully at night.  

My mom and I aren't really ride people, so we walked around and had dinner.  My mom had abelskivers, a Danish doughnut-type dessert (I had a Belgian waffle-- not exactly Danish...).

Then it was back to the hotel for the night.