Prague is Gepacked and Back to Berlin!

At the request of my friend Sarah, I post again. She says, "I'm tired of Gothic Leipzig!" Turns out someone reads this...

Fernando and I decided to take a long weekend in Prague. For the sake of my father, we took a photo of me next to the Gepack Center. Um, it's where you keep your Gepack.

Everyone told me that Prague was beautiful. I cannot be sure, as I couldn't see it beneath all of the people. Here, Fernando is standing next to his favorite statue on the pedestrian bridge. There were occasional signs that one had moved further east, and this statute was one of them. (Other bits of this statue included a jail cell with prisoners screaming inside. Yikes.)

There were some beautiful buildings, but unlike my mother I don't take enough photos. So I guess I have nothing else to say about Prague. Can you believe it?

On Fernando's final weekend here, we spent a bit more time wandering through the beautiful parts of Berlin. We even went to Schloss Charlottenburg. Here's what my guidebook says about it, "It was intended as Berlin's answer to Versailles. It's not a very convincing answer..." That's all you need to know. Here's what we thought:

Actually, I exaggerate. The castle was not very imposing, but the grounds were quite lovely. We had a very nice walk through the park on a warm spring day.

On Fernando's last full day here, we visited Neues Palais in Potsdam. For more photos, revisit the posting "Park Sanssouci". We actually went inside this palace and wore the dorky headphones. Turns out the dorky headphones rock! There was an incredible amount of information about the palace and its history. We even saw the room where Kaiser Wilhelm II signed the authorization to mobilize troops and begin World War I. Crazy. My favorite room in the palace is full of mosaics of sea dragons and other sea creatures made out of shells and minerals. The walls are covered with designs, and it's only when you get close that you can see the remarkable individual pieces. The room is referred to as the "grotto hall". Even the marble floor has designs of sea creatures embedded into it.