Anyone who lives in Key West will tell you that September and October are the most miserably hot and humid months, and also the time we’re most likely to have to worry about hurricanes. The town empties out and everyone goes on vacation. Who are we to question that tradition?

When we began planning our return to Europe, we decided to do something novel (for us) and just pick a couple places to spend multiple days in, rather than jumping all over, trying to see as much as possible. We picked Copenhagen (known for being pretty much our ideal social climate) and Berlin, which I’ve wanted to visit since I became a Cold War nerd in middle school.

(The entire photoset is here on Flickr.)

Read from the beginning below, or jump to each day:

• Thu 9/15 – Fri 9/16: The Longest Day (Key West to Copenhagen)
• Sat 9/17: Wherein We Fall in Love with Copenhagen
• Sun 9/18: Hamlet’s Castle and the Ferry to Sweden
• Mon 9/19: Copenhagen by Bike
• Tue 9/20: Roskilde
• Wed 9/21: From One Awesome City to Another
• Thu 9/22: Cold War History in Berlin
• Fri 9/23: The Berlin Wall and Olympic Stadium
• Sat 9/24: Underground Berlin
• Sun 9/25: Berlin to Frankfurt on the ICE Train
• Mon 9/26: Touring Frankfurt
• Tue 9/27: A Very Pleasant Trip Home

Thursday morning, we had the luxury of sleeping in and making leisurely preparations to go to the airport mid-morning. Flying out of Key West, the airport that’s a little over a mile from our house, is a fantastic luxury; thankfully American’s mileage redemption is the same from here or Miami.

We got a cab through TaxiASAP, our locally-based version of the non-Uber app. (It’s awesome.) We got to the airport waaaay too early, because 1) it’s never busy at check-in or security, and 2) there are 4 gates, all in one room. We got coffee while we waited for our flight.

It was our first time flying from Key West to Miami. It’s 25 minutes in the air and there are amazing views up the Keys and across the Everglades. If airfare from here is even close in price to MIA or FLL in the future, we’re for sure doing that.

Leaving our little island is always a little bit sad. Just look at it!

We landed at MIA and had a little over an hour before our next flight. We got a colada and cortadito, then grabbed empanadas from Half Moon. When you’re going to leave South Florida for a while, you should stock up on Cuban food.

Our flight to Charlotte was a little under an hour and a half, and we had time to fill water bottles and get a beer before hopping our flight to Europe. I was beyond thrilled that Matt and I had a 2-seat row to ourselves, a few rows from the restroom in the first economy section. I’m really terrible at long flights (worse at overnight flights), so having a little space to ourselves is a plus. Then my wiggling can only annoy him, and he’s stuck with me.

We took off at 4:30 in the afternoon on the long journey to Frankfurt. We had seatback TVs with a million movie options, and USB chargers built into the seats. I had neck pillows and earplugs, plus the pillow and blanket from American. I figured if I ever had a chance of sleeping on a flight, this would be it.

We had a surprisingly good dinner (vegan pasta) and free Heinekens. We synced up our TVs and watched Elvis & Nixon, which was mildly entertaining. By that point everyone was closing their windows and turning off their lights, so we decided to try to sleep too. While my earplugs helped a little, it was still as awful as expected. Basically, it was many hours of dozing off, waking up, being sore, and adjusting in my seat. It sucked.

They turned the lights on at 6am Frankfurt time, and started serving breakfast. I saw sunrise over Europe.

We really liked that the GPS map showed shipwrecks. Matt noticed the Titanic on there at one point.

We landed in Frankfurt at 6:50am and pulled in near this monster:

Passport control was easy and customs was nonexistent, so we were on our way to another terminal to catch our connection fairly quickly. We were flying SAS to Copenhagen, so that required walking to the other terminal and finding check-in. We wandered around for a while until we discovered the boards telling us where to check in; SAS was being handled by Lufthansa, which was basically every single check-in desk in the terminal.

Lufthansa’s check-in was 100% automated – scan your boarding pass, enter bag info, put it on the belt, and off it went. It was magical and made me sad about the way we do things in the US. (We also noticed that at no point in the entire process did anyone check our IDs – not even at security, where they inspected Matt’s leftover empanada he’d brought all the way from Miami.)

I got some Euros from the cash machine, and we bought 1 Euro water at the duty-free store (the best deal in the airport). When we got to the gate we discovered it had been moved to the other side of the airport, so we had to go down a million stairs, through a long tunnel, and emerge on the other side. Our flight was boarding when we arrived, and we had to take a shuttle bus to the little plane. It ended up being right near our original flight, so we’d done a lot of walking for nothing. Granted, we did have to recheck our bags.

Our flight to CPH took 1:20, and the views coming in were great. While waiting for our bags, we activated our Copenhagen Cards by writing the start date and time on them. Scandinavia is very trusting! The CPH card includes free fare on all public transit, plus mostly free admission to all major attractions in Copenhagen. By the end of our stay there, we both agreed that it was a spectacularly good value, and it was great to not have to think about paying to get around.

We made our way to the airport train station and got on the train to the center of the city. Our hotel was about a half mile away, but the cobblestones along the way made it seem a lot farther with rolling suitcases. It was too early to check in, so we left our bags at the hotel and went to go find lunch.

We walked over to Torvehallerne, a huge market with food and drink stalls. It was overwhelmingly awesome. After wandering for a while, I decided on a lemongrass tofu banh mi, and Matt went for the fiskediller, a local specialty involving a giant fish-ball-patty-thing.

There was a Mikkeller beer booth, too, so we were set. We ate outside in 70-degree weather, only a 20-degree difference from Key West.

We used the public restrooms on a street corner and were amazed at how clean they were. The attendants had offices in the bathrooms. AMAZING.

We felt very much at home in Copenhagen within an hour, and this is one of the reasons why – the bikes. Oh my god, all the bikes. I loved it.

I’ve never seen so many bikes in one place in my life. I don’t know how you parked yours and ever found it again. We bike everywhere here, too, but it’s still a small town! This was incredible. Also, every major street had a dedicated bike lane separated by a curb or other obstructions. It’s a bike wonderland there, and I’m really envious of the way they prioritize non-car transportation in Denmark.

We walked back in the direction of our hotel, passing the Round Tower along the way. This part of town was a series of huge pedestrian/bike streets lined with shops; Strøget was the busiest of them. Conveniently, our hotel was only a couple blocks from it.

We still had time to kill before check-in, and wanted something very low-impact to do. We’d been awake for more than 24 hours and were dragging. Thanks to the Copenhagen Card, we were able to hop on a canal tour easily!

It took about 15 minutes for the boat to load up and I nearly dozed off during that time. I managed to not actually fall asleep on the boat, though, and woke up when we sailed off. We headed down the canal that surrounds Christiansborg Castle, then into the main canal. The narrator on the boat was announcing in four different languages, which was really incredible.

Looking toward Nyhavn:

Here’s Papirøen, or Paper Island. It’s the home to Copenhagen Street Food, a ton of awesome little food booths. Look at all the people sitting outside – it was like this everywhere we went in CPH. People love hanging out outside on the water with their friends. No wonder it’s the happiest country.

The opera house:

We sailed down a side canal past Noma, to see the edge of Christinia (Freetown). It’s a huge commune right in the middle of the city. Here are some liveaboards, just like at home.

Here’s the canal through Christianshavn:

And Vor Frelsers Kirke, with the spiral staircase on top.

The tour boat dropped us off an hour later around 3:30, and it was finally time to check into the hotel. I feel like the walk back is a total blur – we got our bags, hauled them up in the tiny, tiny European elevator, got out our power adapter and phone chargers so we could recharge our totally dead phones, and fell into bed. I kept dozing off while Matt was in the bathroom and then starting violently awake, because it felt like I was panicking while falling asleep. Going to sleep when you’re that exhausted is an absolutely terrible experience.

We slept from 4 to 8pm, and it was glorious. The loud music in the courtyard of the hotel woke us, because on the weekend they have a pretty awesome little cocktail bar and club there. I felt like a human again, and we were ready for dinner. We changed clothes, I put on a jacket (it was in the 60s! Amazing!!), and we walked the half mile or so over to Tivoli.

Going to Tivoli at night, while drowsy and jet-lagged, was a great idea. Everything is surreal and trippy. And, holy crap, it was crowded. It was the weekend and there was a free concert about to happen, so it was packed.

We wandered around most of the park and then headed toward one of the restaurants Matt had researched earlier, Færgekroen Bryghus. We got a table right on the lake, overlooking this pirate ship. We ordered two of their beers, and sat there being entertained by all the very noisy ducks on the lake.

The restaurant had blankets at every chair, which we soon discovered was pretty universal there. It’s all part of the hygge (‘cozy’) concept in Denmark, and it’s absolutely the best.

The food was great – we had fresh mozzarella and I had an elaborate vegetable dish on top of pureed celery root – and we were once again pretty sleepy by the end of it. We decided to take another spin around the park to see if we’d missed anything.

We picked up some souvenirs, and stopped to watch some of the free concert (Julius Moon and Minds of 99). The whole park around the stage was absolutely packed. We stopped to grab a couple beers at the biergarten, climbed to the top of the waterfall to overlook the park, and then decided it was time to head back.

(That was Matt’s new nickname for the evening.)

On the way back to the hotel, we stopped at Irma to grab a couple beers for the room. Our selections were Obama and Miami Vice, obviously. We got to the room at 11:30pm, looking forward to plenty of sleep.

Distance walked on Thursday/Friday: 11.89 miles

Saturday, September 17th – our fifth wedding anniversary!! We picked a good place to celebrate.

We slept til almost 10, then felt like maybe we were over our jet lag. We got up and went to go find breakfast along one of the pedestrian thoroughfares nearby.

We found a little spot called Kompan 9 (a pun in Danish, it’s pronounced ‘company’). We had eggs and toast – that amazing Danish bread that’s way better than anything you get in the U.S. – and a couple cappuccinos apiece.

From there, we walked over to Nyhavn, which was already really crowded even though it was before lunchtime. One of the buildings was a giant art project:

Despite overcast skies, it’s as attractive as all the photos we’d seen. All those umbrellas are restaurants along the entire waterfront. Some of the ships have restaurants on them, too.

From the other direction:

From there, we walked over to Amalienborg Palace.

Admission to all the royal properties in Copenhagen is included with our CPH cards, so obviously we were going to take advantage of that. The building on the right above is open four touring.

One of the things I learned is that the king loved to surround himself with portraits of the family. Holy crap, the portraits. It was kind of creepy.

The guards seemed slightly more cheerful about having their photos taken with kids, compared to the British. I can’t imagine having this job.

We walked back along the canalfront, where the pedestrian/bike bridge had retracted to allow boats through. How awesome is that? (I realize the color in these photos make it look pretty crappy in Copenhagen. It really wasn’t!)

We walked back over to Nyhavn and found a place exclaiming about their world-famous veggie burger on a board out front, so we decided on that. We sat along the waterfront watching a million people and bikes go by. The veggie burger was pretty good, but by no means world-changing. After lunch, we walked a few blocks to a bus stop and hopped on a bus towards Carlsberg.

The buses in CPH were super-easy to use, since they had digital displays with the next destination, and that a stop had been requested. If buses in the US were all like that, I’m pretty sure more people would use them (especially travelers). It’s hard to use buses if you’re not familiar with a city.

We hopped off at Carlsberg and had a long walk to the visitor center, since the front gate was blocked. We showed our CPH cards and were handed tickets for two glasses of beer apiece, plus admission to the self-guided tour. We got a beer at the bar and went to go see their facilities.

Upstairs, we found the Guinness-Book-World-Record-Holding largest collection of beer bottles in the world. It was incredible, and this isn’t even all of them.

We learned that Carlsberg was responsible for huge advances in yeast production for brewing. Who knew?

In the stable, we found a bunch of horses standing around with their gigantic horse-dongs dangling all over the place. (I didn’t post a photo here, though I *did* take one.) We were a little confused, but realized most of the people there were also giggling about it. I’d definitely never seen that before, but I guess I don’t hang out with horses that often, either.

After our tour, we went to the shop and then upstairs to their gigantic taproom, where we used our other beer coupon. Then we got directions to the famous gate with the Carlsberg elephants, which we would have passed if the main entrance had been opened.

(Don’t worry about the swastikas – those predate Nazis by a lot.)

I like the skyways.

From there, we walked back to the bus stop and rode about halfway back to our hotel, hopping off near the Mikkeller taproom. It’s a small basement with a few rooms and picnic tables out on the street. It looked really crowded, but we managed to walk in just as two seats opened at the bar, which gave us a great view of the tap list. Which was spectacular, of course.

We stayed there for a few rounds (and wanted to stay longer, but dinner called). We headed down the block to an Indian restaurant Matt had read about, called South Indian. It was on the second level of a building and much fancier than expected. Since they were known for their dosa we ordered masala dosa, a bottle of Kingfisher to split, and I had okra curry. I don’t usually like okra, but this was really good.

After dinner, we walked the mile or so back to our hotel, past Tivoli, to drop off our shopping bags. I had big plans for our anniversary, which involved nothing more than having champagne at the Veuve Cliquot bar I’d spotted earlier on our walk down Stroget. So we headed back off in that direction, walked to the far end of Stroget, and it wasn’t there. I have no idea where the place I saw was – I’m usually great with directions – but it definitely wasn’t there. Instead, we decided to just get a glass of champagne back at our fancy hotel bar later than night. We turned and headed back that direction.

On the way, we walked passed Lord Nelson, which Matt realized was on his list of recommended beer spots in the city. We decided to stop in. Like Mikkeller, it was also half a story down in the basement, and this one was very dive-y looking, in an awesome way.

The bartender was friendly, and the beer selection was great. The wall was decorated with little wooden plaques that the guests had drawn. We sent a picture of this one to our Welsh friend back home:

One of their beers was a Surly collaboration based on Todd the Axe Man, which blew our minds a little bit. A Scottish guy wandered up to order and we ended up in a conversation about the way of things in America; we assured him that we were not vaccine deniers, and that Zika was actually a concern in Miami. I can only imagine what people overseas hear about Americans nowadays.

From there, we walked to Huset, a couple blocks from our hotel. It’s a multi-story building containing Bastard Cafe (a beer bar with a million board games), multiple show venues, and a movie theatre. We went up to the big showroom to see the David Bowie tribute going on there. It was in the 60s outside, but inside the room it was approximately 150 degrees. I don’t think this was smoke effect so much as sauna:

We got beers and stood around watching the band for a while. At first we suspected they were awful, then it turned out they were actually awful. There was very little David Bowie about it; the only good thing was the Commodore 64 that one of the band members had fashioned into a synthesizer. We watched a few songs before getting the hell out of there, laughing about the ‘tribute’.

We went downstairs to a quieter room that appeared to be a gay bar, had a beer there, and then headed back to the hotel bar, called Honey Ryder. It was in full swing. We worked our way through the crowd to the back of the room, where we found a spot at the bar. The menu was really excellent, so we ordered cocktails and took them out to the patio (in the courtyard that our room overlooked). Once we were done with those, we decided we had to get our anniversary champagne, so we went back to the bar to order. When I mentioned the big event, the bartender said it was on him. That was a pretty excellent way to end the night!

Miles walked: 11.23 / 23.12 total

Sunday morning, we slept in til 10am and then walked over to the main train station to get coffee and breakfast sandwiches. That’s when I discovered the glory that is Joe and the Juice, and their amazing ginger lattes. (I later discovered that they’re opening one in Miami Beach, so at least I can go there pretty regularly.) Since Europe is approximately 400% better at food quality than the US, we had some basic but fresh and delicious sandwiches on nice rye flatbreads to take with us on the train.

We boarded the train to Helsingør (otherwise known as Elsinore) and had a pleasant 45-minute ride mostly along the coast. At the end of the line, we hopped off and walked through the cute little down toward Kronborg. There was a big event venue there, plus the Maritime Museum of Denmark, which was underground at the port.

It’s Hamlet’s castle!! This was a pretty hardcore nerd moment for us.

Alas, poor Yorick.

Helsingør is situated at the narrowest part of the Øresund strait, which runs between Denmark and Sweden. You can easily see Helsingborg from there.

You can buy Yorick water at Kronborg castle, in case you were wondering.

This is in the inner courtyard:

We took the castle tour, which wound its way through multiple sections of the castle. The rooms were surprisingly spare compared to the more recent castles. (These furnishings are from the 17th century.)

A thing we learned about Danish castles – they burned down a lot. Seriously. They were rebuilding them all the damn time.

And they used animals as decor. I guess hipsters do that nowadays too. I just wouldn’t want to have to step on a boar every morning.

The ballroom was gigantic. This photo doesn’t even do it justice. It’s monstrous.

This guy is hanging out in the chapel, just being creepy.

After touring all the aboveground property, we descended into the depths beneath the castle. This was even more nervewracking than it would generally be, because not only was it a dank castle basement with uneven cobblestones and probably ghosts, the flashlight vending machine was broken and we had to use our cellphones instead. There were little rooms everywhere that you’d have to peer into, wondering what was going to jump out and attack you.

Thankfully, we only found Holger Danske down there, and we knew to expect him. He’s there protecting the castle, and looking pretty badass doing it.

After Kronborg, we walked over to the M/S Maritime Museum and had lunch at the cafe, which was on the very lower level of the belowground building. We knew we were supposed to buy tickets to go in, but could not begin to figure out where the actual entrance was from there. The entire building is built in a downward spiral from ground level (it’s a ship-shaped dry dock, essentially), so we finally decided to go back outside, up the steps, and start from the actual beginning.

After getting our fill of maritime nerdery, it was time to visit a new country. (Matt has actually been to Sweden before, but I hadn’t.) We walked over to the ferry terminal and bought tickets to Helsingborg. We even got a discount with the CPH card, which was awesome.

The ferry’s shop was having a special on Tuborg and a shot of Gammeldansk. When in Scandinavia… you drink liqueurs that taste like dead people. It’s bad.

It was only about a 20 minute ride across the strait; it took longer to load the ferry. (Not the passengers – there weren’t many of us – but the trucks crossing over to Sweden. The ship had a very fancy truck drivers’ lounge, too!)

The ferry terminal on the Helsingborg side was in a little mall full of fast food restaurants, and looked a lot like a cruise terminal. The town was larger than Helsingør, but almost totally deserted late on a Sunday afternoon. The majority of the shops were closed. (We didn’t mind much; the main reason we went over there was just to set foot in Sweden, and maybe have a beer.)

We happened across this imposing structure while wandering around, so we decided to check it out. Rather than climb the many, many stairs, we found an elevator with an operator who charged a few Euros to take you to the top. Worth it!

There was a big park at the top called Slottshagen, and this huge tower, which is the only remnant of the Medieval castle that once stood there. It’s called Kärnan.

The tower wasn’t open, but the view from the top of the hill was pretty spectacular. This is looking back toward Denmark.

We climbed back down the stairs, which are protected by gargoyles that didn’t scare Bally one bit.

We decided to grab a beer before heading back, so we found an open bar called Pitchers that was showing soccer games. We hung out there for a bit, then walked back to the ferry, which was even less crowded on the return trip. The ferry terminal is conveniently upstairs from the train station on the Denmark side, so we went downstairs and found our train back to Copenhagen.

Rather than stopping at the main train station, we continued on to Norreport, then hopped on the 6A bus to Westerbro for dinner. (Seriously, public transit in Copenhagen could not be easier. We loved it.) Our destination was Von Fressen, a German-focused restaurant with a large vegetarian and vegan menu, plus excellent beers and cocktails. It was basically made for us.

The place was nuts when we walked in, but we found a little table and figured out how ordering worked (at the bar). I had an excellent veggie burger and a cocktail, and we sat watching the large group in the bar area get larger and drunker. It was impressive. By the time we went to leave, they had filled up the entire entryway and the front steps, so we had to fight our way out of the place.

We walked a few blocks to the bus stop and Matt realized he didn’t have his CPH card. That was immensely upsetting because it was so valuable, not to mention convenient. He knew he’d had it on the train from Helsingborg, so we decided to go back to the restaurant and look around. We fought our way back inside, and Matt went to go search by the table while I went to the bar to see if anyone had turned it in. I asked the bartender, “Have you seen a–” and he held up Matt’s CPH card. Hooray! We were very relieved.

We took the bus back to the Rathouse and walked to the hotel. On the way there we passed the bar next door called Southern Cross, which had a crowd of British and Australian people standing outside smoking, drinking, and yelling (well, talking loudly). We decided we needed to go in there at some point, but definitely not while there were people spilling out onto the street. We headed up to our room and found the Colts/Broncos game on TV with Danish announcers, which was hilarious. I fell asleep around 11pm.

Miles walked: 12.94 / 36.06 total

Monday morning, we got up at 8 and walked to a nearby cafe for coffee and croissants. We’d both received emails from the US Embassy in Copenhagen inviting us to a reception there that night, because we’d signed up for notifications. We had no idea what that was about, but it seemed like a strange idea.

Then we headed in the direction of the rental bike stand, passing our friend Tree.0 along the way. He played us cheerful music as always.

We’d both set up Bycyklen accounts ahead of time, so getting bikes was pretty simple. They have tablets built into the handlebars where you log in and map your destination.

The bikes were power-assist, so they were heavy and kind of noisy, but they were also pretty much perfect for getting around in a town so friendly to bikes.

We rode to Freetown Christiania, the old autonomous neighborhood in Copenhagen. We’d heard a bit about its history as a commune of approximately 850 residents, and how there were years-long waiting lists to get in, and an insanely intensive screening and election process for new residents.

While drugs aren’t legal anywhere in Denmark, the sale of weed is overlooked in Christiania. There are signs all over Pusher Street (in the Green Light District) requesting no photos, because the drug trade there has been problematic. Christiania has strict rules disallowing weapons and hard drugs, but they keep finding their way in, which forces the police to intervene. It’s apparently been a challenging place to live recently, which is unfortunate.

Here’s the sign leaving Christiania: “You are now entering the EU”.

The artsiness reminded me of here in the Keys, and the Wynwood neighborhood in Miami. There’s also a lot of it that looks trashed and very much like a homeless camp, particularly in the area around Pusher Street. There are several different ‘pods’ in the neighborhood full of adorable little hippie houses.

We rode around the loop near the other neighborhoods, along the old ramparts of the city. From there you look back on the main canals. It’s weird to be in an almost-rural area right next to the city.

There’s been an ongoing fight to try to develop Christiania. In one of the most expensive cities in the world, it’s sought-after property. (I hope Freetown stays as it is.)

This could not be more like Key West:

We did a few bike loops around the area, then headed over to Papirøen (Paper Island, named for the old paper warehouse there) for lunch at Copenhagen Street Food.

Yoko Ono had an art exhibit there, where you wrote your greatest wish on a tag to hang in a tree. There were plenty of anti-Trump and anti-hate sentiments to be found there.

The warehouse was full of amazing food booths. Matt had a giant sausage and I had a falafel. It reminded us a lot of Grand Central Market in downtown L.A..

Since we’d parked our bikes at the bike return, we decided to walk back across to Nyhavn. Here’s the main pedestrian/bike bridge, which retracts in the middle when large ships pass underneath.

Some fall color was pretty welcome, since we don’t really experience it anymore!

We found Noma, probably the most famous restaurant in the world, at the foot of the bridge. It had its own apiary out front.

We had to go inside the geodesic dome nearby. You put on slippers and went inside the giant mirrored ball:

We crossed the bridge to Nyhavn, and the sun was finally coming out. It’s such a pretty area, despite all those construction containers!

From there, we walked over to Christiansborg Palace. It was another of the many places with admission included on the CPH Card. (Have I mentioned it’s a great deal? Haha.)

The palace is a huge complex on an island in the middle of the city. Much of it is still in use by parliament, the supreme court, and the royal family. You can tour the ruins beneath the palace, the stables, and the queen’s reception rooms, when she’s not using them.

We did the underground tour first, and got to see various sections of the foundation as it grew over the years. Also, as it burnt down – because, yes, it burnt down A LOT. You’d think you’d get better at having your castles not burn down, but apparently not in Denmark.

The stables had various carriages used by the royal family, in addition to a bunch of horses. That’s when we learned that when horses are relaxed, they let their junk hang out all over the place in kind of horrifying fashion.

Yes, I took a picture. No, I’m not posting it here.

After that, we went to the queen’s reception rooms. Apparently we had good timing, because they’d just reopened after an earlier event. It’s good to know she’d just been hanging around recently.

You have to wear these fancy plastic slippers to tour the place, so you don’t go tramping your peasant dirt all over the place:

Here’s the library. I want a library with a second story.

And the giant dining table. It must’ve taken half an hour to pass the salt.

My favorite room was full of really unusual tapestries depicting the history of the country.

They’re all bright colors, with really unusual imagery.

Here’s the throne room:

After the castle, we wandered down Stroget to do some souvenir shopping. It’s the main pedestrian thoroughfare that makes walking around town very pleasant, and it’s lined with restaurant patios.

We had to stop into the Lego store, of course. We also discovered Flying Tiger, which is kind of like Ikea for teenage girls. Loved it.

We were sick to death of walking at that point, so we stopped into a taphouse for a couple beers and some sittin’ before moving on. Then we walked back to our hotel, dropped off all our purchases, and headed to the bus to Vesterbro.

Our dinner destination was another Mikkeller joint, Ramen to Biiru. In case it’s not obvious, it’s a restaurant that serves ramen and beer. It was basically made for us. Plus they had a Mikkeller vending machine. MAGIC.

After dinner, we walked to a nearby cocktail bar, Lidkoeb, for drinks. It was an incredibly friendly, hygge place, and we learned all about the secret bike theft problem in Copenhagen. (Scandal! I mean, in Key West a bike goes missing approximately every 2 seconds, so I think our problems are different.)

We stopped at 7-11 on the way back to our hotel in order to pick up some breakfast supplies. We had early train plans the next day, so we didn’t want to stop in the morning. Even 7-11 there was incredibly compared to the trashy convenience stores we have in the US – the food was fresh and they had a ton of great options. I got a Paleo Cake for the morning.

We noticed that Southern Cross was not packed with loud shouting Australians as we passed, so we decided it was finally time to stop in. We went downstairs and found a tiny bar with an upstairs loft (it looked rickety), and an American bartender. We started talking with him and the Danish lady next to us about local drinking traditions, including their love of licorice (as strong and salty as possible) and Gammeldansk. The bartender decided he had to give us things that were *worse*, so we tried some godawful liqueurs and then a test tube shot from Australia that was kind of creamy with a piece of licorice in the bottom. So gross.

While we were there, we also heard about people who had gone to the US Embassy party that night. WHO KNEW?

We wanted to stay forever, but it’s the kind of place you’d end up dying. So unfortunately, it was time to head back to the hotel for the night.

Miles walked: 11.24 miles / 47.3 total

We got up Tuesday around 9, had our 7-11 breakfast, and walked to the train station to head to Roskilde, about 20 miles west of Copenhagen. (After grabbin another delicious ginger latte at Joe and the Juice, of course.) It was about a 25 minute ride to the town, and a pleasant walk through the cute little town. Here’s the old Rathouse:

The cathedral plaza was a few blocks away.

Roskilde Cathedral is a UNESCO World Heritage site constructed in the 12th century. (In case you were wondering, yes – it also burned down regularly.)

We did the self-guided tour, which includes an elaborate guide to all the royalty buried there. There are many, many kings and queens in the various chapels around the church. It’s still in use, too; the current queen has her burial site ready to go when it’s time. I liked that we got to tour it – it’s very modern, yet it fits well.

These were extra-creepy.

You know how you measure your kids and mark their heights on a door jamb? Apparently that’s been going on forever. Here’s the heights of various kings:

The chapel is monstrous.

That grave with the black marker – that’s a horse. Supposedly he haunts the cathedral, too. Ghost horse.

After we were done at the cathedral, we headed off toward the Viking Ship Museum, which is located at the bottom of a very steep hill on the banks of the fjord. It’s a really scenic spot. We got tickets and toured the outside exhibits first, which involved an actual shipbuilding reconstruction that they invite people to help with. They had several reconstruction ships there.

We went down to see the fjord. This boat seemed pretty appealing:

You could also sign up to take a short trip on one of the Viking ships. This one looked really fun; the other that was leaving at that moment was full of people trying to row it with giant narrow oars. It was going nowhere and the people looked miserable, so I feel like we made the right choice to not go on that one.

We went inside the museum, and Bally tested out a Viking ship. I’m pretty sure his arms aren’t long enough to row.

They had an exhibit with all the pieces they’d salvaged from various ancient wrecks in the fjord. One of them was nearly complete.

The shop there was great, too; we got several souvenirs, gifts, and I got these amazing Danish sunglasses:

Then we went to their restaurant, Cafe Knarr, for lunch. I had a vegetable plate and Matt had a smorgasbord plank with various fish salads. Both of ours included roasted parsnips, barley, and pickled buckthorn. This meal was so incredibly good it makes me kind of sad to see it and know that it’s currently so very far away from me.

Smart people would have taken the bus or a taxi back up the giant hill into town, but we said, “eh, it’s only a kilometer long.” It’s not like we’d already walked over 50 miles on the trip or anything. So we climbed the hill, and I was pretty sure I was going to die at the end. It felt like a victory getting back to the cathedral.

We walked back through town, stopping into a couple stores along the way. I bought a maroon Fjallraven Kanken backpack at one of the shops, because everyone in Europe has one and I obviously needed one too.

I used the 2-kroner train station restroom (in keeping with all restrooms in Denmark, it was spotless), and then we hopped on the train back to Copenhagen. This one was the coveted double-decker train, so we went up to the top deck for a really excellent view on the return trip.

Here’s the main train station in CPH. It’s hard to see, but they have a huge oldtimey neon clock on the front that looks really cool at night.

Here’s the Rathaus near our hotel.

The giant Palace Hotel is on the same plaza. The rental bikes and Tree.0 are nearby. We picked the perfect place to stay in Copenhagen, since it was walking distance to everything we’d want to see.

We did some shopping around our neighborhood, picked up a few more souvenirs, and then headed to the Bastard Cafe. It was getting colder outside, so we wanted to go hang out and play games. Also, they had a great beer selection. We played a game that involved one person being the criminal avoiding detection, and the other trying to trap them.

We then headed back to the hotel to organize and pack our suitcases. After a while, we headed back out to find dinner at a restaurant we’d picked in Nyhavn. We rented Bycycklen to ride over there, but once we arrived we couldn’t figure out where the dropoff point was. The GPS map on the bike was confusing and kept trying to send us in the wrong direction, and their website wasn’t much more help.

We finally found the stop a few blocks away (much farther from Nyhavn than you’d expect). It was full, but the nice thing is that you can park them there regardless; they just need to be near the docking station and locked. We did so and walked to the restaurant, grabbing a table on the patio at Cap Horn. It was cold, but they had blankets there for us.

We ordered an Aperol Spritz (which seemed to be a very popular drink there, much like in Rome). My dinner was a beet cake with celery puree, crisps, and pears. Matt had a flatiron steak with plums. Both were excellent. It started to rain during dinner, so we had to shift over a table to get under the giant patio umbrella.

After dinner, the rain had died down to a drizzle, so we walked back in the direction of our hotel. We stopped in at Ruby, an attractive little cocktail bar along a canal. We chose a set of armchairs and had a couple cocktails in their very-hygge setting before heading back to our hotel for the night. We were excited to get to Berlin the next day, but I was apprehensive that it couldn’t possibly be as great as Denmark. We’d had such a great time there, we were pre-regretting leaving!

Miles walked: 11.27/ 58.57 total

We got up bright and early Wednesday morning and checked out of the hotel. We rolled our suitcases over a million cobblestones to the main train station, got the required ginger lattes at Joe and the Juice one last time, and then went to find the train to the airport.

AirBerlin seems to be one of those fly-by-night airlines (like RyanAir), so they weren’t in the check-in system. We went to the desk instead, and had to wait a while to check in. The luggage conveyor belt was broken, too!

We did some last-minute shopping in the airport, then went to find our flight. There was a row of really incredibly drunk guys behind us heading to Oktoberfest (they’d already begun their own personal Oktoberfest), so that was kind of annoying, especially when they continued ordering a bunch of beers on the flight. Thankfully, the flight was short. We landed at Berlin Tegel about 40 minutes later.

In the main terminal, we found the booth that distributes the Berlin Welcome Card, which we’d ordered in advance. Much like the CPH Card, it included all public transit, and a lot of free/discounted admissions in the city. From there, we found the bus stop and boarded the TXL bus to Alexanderplatz.

The bus took about a half-hour to get to the Hauptbahnhof, and we had good views along the way. We were a little concerned when everyone got off there, and we were the only two left on the bus. Still, Google said it was going to Alexplatz, so we stayed on. The bus went a few blocks further, circled a nearby park, and then there was an announcement that it was the end of the line.

The bus driver gave us instructions for getting to Alexplatz – basically, cross the street and hop on a streetcar. We did that, and crossed over to the former East German side to the Alexplatz U-Bahn stop. Our hotel was a couple blocks further east.

The Hotel Indigo was a very nice little business hotel attached to the Holiday Inn. Because Matt’s a gold IHG member, they’d upgraded us to a really fantastic suite on the 9th floor. The bathroom was almost the size of our bedroom in our house, and the shower was big enough for 10 people. I loved it.

They had some Blue Man partnership, so their branding was everywhere:

This was our view, overlooking Alexanderplatz and the Fernsehturm. I couldn’t get over how great it was.

We unpacked, then walked over to see the TV Tower.

I’ve been obsessed with Berlin since I started studying German in 7th grade, and then moved on to Russian during the Cold War era. Getting to see all the buildings I’d learned about for years was seriously incredible to me.

We decided to go for the overview first, so we got tickets to the rotating restaurant at the top. Usually there would be a long wait, but the observation deck itself was closed for a private event, and the only other option was the restaurant. The 25-euro/pp admission fee just to get into the restaurant was expensive, but for the experience? We didn’t care.

This is more sun glare than haze, I promise. Looking west, the Brandenburg Gate is in the middle at the entrance to the Tiergarten (Berlin’s Central Park). The main street down the center is Unter Den Linden, and the Reichstag is the building on the right with the glass dome.

I ordered a Schofferhofer grapefruit beer with guarana (energy beer!) and Matt ordered a Berliner Weisse with raspberry syrup. His drink came in a flat bowl of a glass with a short straw, and was more juice than beer. We quickly learned that the original Berliner Weisse is much different than the one we expect here.

Matt ordered potato soup and flammekuchen, and I had mushroom strudel with asparagus. We were pretty thrilled to dive into German food so completely.

Here’s the Spree river with Museum Island.

Looking northeast:

Looking southeast; the Alexplatz station is right below. Our hotel is the tallish building on the left. God, the Soviet-era buildings. So godawfully ugly.

After making almost two revolutions on the Fernsehturm, we headed back down to earth and walked over to the Berliner Dom.

We circled some of Museum Island and crossed back over to pass the DDR Museum, right on the Spree. We’d be stopping there later for sure.

We stopped in a few shops around Alexplatz, including the Ampelmann store. Bally got to meet him, too:

We walked back to the hotel to redeem our free-drink coupons (courtesy of the front desk). We both ordered beer, but the bartender said that he could only pour prosecco for women and beer for men, because that’s how it was. Germany, you’re kind of a stereotype sometimes.

We went back up to the room right as sun was setting, and changed clothes because it was cooling off. We did some map-examining and researched local restaurants, then headed back out for the night.

We walked a few blocks to Prince, a Thai restaurant nearby that had really good reviews. It was fairly full, but we managed to get a table. We had crispy rolls (both fried and spring rolls), a papaya salad, and green tofu curry. They had a really nice cocktail menu, too.

From there, we took the U-Bahn over to Gretchen Club in Kreutzberg. We’d wanted to see Youngblood Brass Band in the US forever, and of course the only night they’d played Minneapolis a few years back, we were out of town. We loved them, and coincidentally they just happened to be playing in Berlin the night we arrived. Which was convenient.

We bought tickets at the door and went inside. It was kind of like a smaller Quest Club (I know, nobody remembers Quest Club). Beers were cheap, and the bartenders were friendly. The show was fantastic, and for some idiotic reason, neither of us took pictures. So we’ll just have to remember that we were there, sweating in a crowd of Berliners watching a band from central Wisconsin. That’s how it goes.

They also covered Umbrella by Rihanna, Don’t Speak by No Doubt, and Mad World. SO GREAT.

Here’s a show poster I saw on the way back to our hotel, at least!

After the show, we rode back and decided to stop into the gigantic Hofbrauhaus a block from our hotel. It’s the same Munich-based one that you find everywhere (I think the first one we visited was in Milwaukee), but we didn’t care. It was Oktoberfest time, and we were in Germany. It’s the correct time to drink a liter of beer.

We left there about 1am and went to the hotel with the intention of sleeping in as late as we wanted.

Walked: 9.88 miles/ 68.45 total

We slept til 11am Thursday morning, and it was glorious, though a little hard to sleep through the noise of the trams passing on the street. We stopped at Dunkin Donuts at Alexplatz for a quick breakfast, then hopped on the train to the Brandenburg Gate.

We emerged from underground and there it was. I admit I cried a bit when I saw it, I was so excited. Think of all the history that’s happened here, good and bad.

Here’s the Hotel Adlon nearby:

And the obligatory Trabant, of course. You can rent a Trabi! It’ll probably fall apart after a mile, but that’s OK.

From there, we crossed into the Tiergarten and walked toward the Victory Monument in the middle. At that point I was definitely aware of the fact we’d walked 75 miles already. It seemed like a very long way!

We decided to take the bus over to Checkpoint Charlie, but ended up getting on one going the wrong direction. We hopped off again, and noticed we were right by Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, so it was nice to accidentally see it. We got on the same bus going the other direction, and that one dropped us off right at Checkpoint Charlie. (Also, the double-decker buses in Berlin are excellent for sightseeing.)

My cold-war-nerd excitement was at a peak. This was so awesome to see.

It’s right in the middle of a heavily-used street, which was not what I expected.

Across the street from the checkpoint, there’s a currywurst stand run by the Currywurst Museum, which is a REAL THING a couple blocks away. Better yet, they had vegan currywurst. This suddenly became a top-ten day in my life.

There’s an exhibit across the street with pieces of the Berlin Wall. This was cool to see, but for the maximum effect you must see the East Side Gallery. It’s really incredible. (That came later.)

From there, our plan was to take the U-Bahn to Olympic Stadium. Googling it on the train, we saw that it appeared to be closed, even though it was during their normal hours. Apparently there was a special event going on. We were glad we found that out before taking the long trip there; we got off at Potsdamer Platz instead.

This area was almost completely destroyed during WWII, and then the Berlin Wall ran through it during the Cold War. Now it’s a huge park lined with modern buildings.

We stopped to have a beer at a cafe overlooking the park. King Ludwig makes a mighty fine helles lager.

We rode back to the Brandenburg Gate and went to explore the other side of it. Here’s the Reichstag, where Hitler used to give speeches before it burnt down. The interior was completely redone after unification, and they added the glass observation dome as a replacement for the original.

The Holocaust Memorial is nearby, too. It’s sobering. The 2,000+ slabs look like coffins, and as you go farther in, they get taller and taller. The ones in the distance are taller than humans.

From there, we took the bus to the DDR Museum, where we took turns driving (and crashing) a Trabant.

The museum was pretty great – it’s all about life in East Germany during the Cold War. The interactive stuff was pretty entertaining, too. Here’s Matt dressed like a typical East German.

We walked back to our hotel, passing the weird world clock at Alexplatz. We’d passed it a few times already without really noticing what it was about – it shows the time in cities around the world.

We did some much-needed resting at the hotel (having now walked over 80 miles!), then went to get the train to dinner. Our selection was Tiki Heart, because they were a tiki bar that also had vegetarian food. It definitely reminded us of home.

I had a veggie burger with pumpking and curry sauce, and a Singapore Sling. Matt had the Lemmy Burger and a caipirinha. Our meals were delicious.

We headed back to the train station, which was a gigantic platform under an overpass. As we walked down the stairs we saw our train sitting there, preparing to leave. Matt jumped in right as the doors started to close, and they shut between us. Unlike American trains, the doors don’t re-open when they sense movement, either. Like a bad romantic comedy, we waved at each other as the train left the station.

The next train showed up 8 minutes later, so I hopped on. It went to the next stop and then decided that was the end of the line, for some reason. (It was pretty late, so the trains were stopping for the night.) I texted Matt to tell him I’d be about 10 minutes behind him, because the next train showed up right behind, and was actually going to Alexanderplatz.

We walked to a bar along the plaza that specialized in Weisse mit Schnapps, and had one there (with Kirsch!) before heading back to the hotel for the night.

Walked: 12 miles/80.45 total

Friday, we got up at 8:30 and went across the street to a little cafe, Wandel, for croissants and coffee. Then we walked over to the train station at Alexanderplatz to get the train to the East Side Gallery.

The East Side Gallery has the largest section of preserved wall, and it’s become an art installation. A big portion of it has photos from the war in Syria:

It’s located right along the Spree River.

That’s Gorbachev behind the wheel:

We feel you, wall. So depressing.

We walked up and down the exhibit, then headed to one of the tour boat stops to take a ride up the Spree River. We thought we were getting on a full-loop tour, but realized a bit later it just went up the river a ways and stopped. We didn’t mind; we were on a boat.

Here’s a picture of the weird Berliner Weisse glasses with juice in it! Also, in Germany it’s OK to name beer after kids.

The area near the East Side Gallery is just now being redeveloped; there’s a lot of gentrification going on. Germany’s going through a lot of struggle with refugees in recent years, and Berlin seemed like an especially welcoming place.

Here’s Yaamaica, a little Jamaican bar on the river.

Heading toward the cathedral:

We went up past the Hauptbahnhof and into the west side of Berlin, which we hadn’t seen too much of yet. It’s very, very different from the area around Alexanderplatz, on the former East German side.

This guy was waiting for us when we got off the boat.

The end of the line was near the Tiergarten, so we hopped on the train to ride over to the beer garden called Schleusen Krug in the park. Matt had read about it, and it sounded pretty great. We ordered from an extremely friendly man in a window, and went to grab a picnic table. The place was gigantic and lively.

I had pretzel knudel with mushroom sauce, tomato, and onion. Matt had giant meatballs with a beet salad. Our meals plus beers were only 14 euro, reminding us that Berlin prices were a really refreshing break from both Copenhagen *and* Key West.

After lunch, we went back to the train station and headed to the Olympic Stadium. It’s imposing, as you’d expect from something build for Hitler’s Olympics.

The stadium itself is really impressive. The Berlin soccer team plays here. (We made sure to stop into their team shop, obviously.)

The swimming pools are still in use as well.

Here’s the list of gold medalists. We were happy to see Jesse Owen’s name at the top.

This is the parade field. It’s creepy just to see such a Hitleresque edifice.

They have one of the original bells outside. The swastika has one of the corners filled in, as if to pretend it’s not a swastika.

Once we were done with the stadium tour, we took the train back into the city to the Ramones Museum. REALLY. Admission was 6 euros, which included a beer from the bar.

The building isn’t huge, but it’s absolutely packed full of Ramones memorabilia. It’s amazing.

This is the bar area outside the museum – the wall is covered in notes from bands who have stopped in.

From there, we walked to see Hackescher Markt, a big shopping area fairly close to where we were staying. It consists of a series of indoor malls and building courtyards all leading into one another in a huge maze. There were nice stores there, but it was really incredibly crowded and we were tired of walking. We wandered around for a bit, then decided to take the tram back to our hotel for a break.

A bit later on, we headed out to get dinner in a neighborhood south of us, near Templehof. We took the U-Bahn to the bus, which was absolutely packed. We finally arrived at Sfizy Veg, which was billed as the best vegan pizza in Berlin. We ordered bruschetta and the Rustica pizza, which had ‘salami’ and artichokes. There was also organic beer, because it was a vegan restaurant. It was indeed delicious, though.

There was a woman sitting at the bar by herself reading while we were talking about football. She spun around and told us she was very excited to overhear Americans talking about sports. She said she was there on business and didn’t speak German. (We agreed that it’s very easy to get around most of Berlin withouth speaking much German, but when you go to neighborhood places like this one it becomes more challenging. Thankfully food is a universal language.)

After dinner we walked to the Ringbahn, which was also totally packed, and took that to a tram that dropped us off near Hops & Barley, a little brewpub in a trendy party of town. It was also totally packed, but we were able to make our way to the bar to order beers. The bartenders were really friendly, and we managed to find a spot to sit in a back room where they were showing soccer. It was the smoking lounge, but we didn’t care that much. It was nice to have American-style beer in Germany, too. (Not that we were hurting for variety in Copenhagen.)

On our second trip to the bar, we discovered their specialty, the Snakebit (schlangenbiss): half-cider, half-beer, with one of the weissen syrups mixed in – raspberry, I think? Anyway, it was delicious. Also, we managed to find a tiny table in the actual bar, away from the smoke.

The trams had stopped running after midnight, so we had to walk back to the U-Bahn. We got back to Alexplatz and walked back to our hotel, noticing that the club in the building next door (Skyclub) was finally open – it had looked almost like it was boarded up. As much as we wanted to see a Berlin nightclub, we also really didn’t. Plus we’re old, so we get tired after midnight.

Miles walked: 13.44/93.89 total

Saturday morning, I got up around 9am and noticed that there were people leaving the Skyroom club. They were sweeping up, and the doors were closed by the time we left the hotel about 10. Holy crap, Berliners. You know how to party.

We hopped on a nearby tram and rode to a park containing a Swiss restaurant named Nola’s. It was in a cute chalet-like building on top of a hill. We got a table on the patio.

I want this breakfast EVERY SINGLE DAY. It was so good.

From there, we took the U-Bahn to Gesundbrunnen for the Underground Berlin tour, which leaves from a closed portion of the train station. We stopped in to buy tickets, then had time to kill so we went over to the large park across the street. We hung out in the rose garden, then headed back to the tour at 1pm.

I wasn’t really sure what to expect from the tour; they had several different options that all seemed to be variations on the same thing, touring the underground bunkers used by Berliners during the war. I was concerned it would be kind of overblown and touristy, but that fear was soon put to rest.

The group of 30+ people came from all over the world – only a few of us were American. Our tour guide was an older Danish lady who had an extremely effective way of getting her point across. She took us down the stairs into the bowels of the former U-Bahn station, and showed us how the walls were painted with glow-in-the-dark due to power outages. She talked about the overcrowding and terrible breathing conditions. At one point we all packed into a room and sat on low benches while she described the suffocating conditions. She also asked if anyone there had experienced a similar situation, and a few people mentioned they were from Israel and had had to spend time in bomb shelters there. It was awful.

Later on in the tour, she talked about how Hitler came to power in Germany, and how neo-Nazism was on the rise all over the world. She said we needed to remember this at all times, lest it happen again. It was chilling to hear in September, and even moreso now after the election. We just keep repeating the same horrible mistakes over and over, don’t we?

I hope everyone who visits Berlin takes one of these tours. The company who runs them is doing everything they can to keep the memory of those events alive.

After the tour, we took the train and bus over to Charlottenburg to see the palace. Well, sort of:

We decided to keep moving, and hopped on another series of buses (it was a long way!) to Stone Brewery, which had recently opened a Berlin outpost. It was a wonderland of beer.

There was a huge warehouse of a building that housed the restaurant, bar, and brewhouse, plus a huge patio with firepits. We had a few beers off the gigantic menu, and ordered dinner as well. Then the store, of course.

We’d read that there was a secret back route to get to the train station from there, and I’m glad we asked a couple employees to confirm that and get directions. It was just starting to get dark, and the path looked like a good spot to get murdered. It ended up being a nice bike path along the train tracks, which then became a trail behind a bunch of really cute cottage gardens.

(Round about this point is where we hit the 100-miles-walked-on-vacation point, by the way. We could feel it, too.)

We found the train station and rode to Kreutzberg to find another brewery, BRLO. It couldn’t have been more different from Stone – it’s basically an empty lot with a giant wooden deck with PVC structure around it, and a few converted shipping containers serving as the bar and counter service restaurant. It was great, and the people working there were great. I also appreciated that they had piles of blankets, because it had started to get cold. I was able to wrap up and feel quite hygge indeed.

After a couple beers there, we went to the train station and rode back to Alexplatz. We decided to continue our beer tour since it was still early, and walked over to the Hofbrauhaus. This time, however, Oktoberfest was in full swing. It was INSANE, and approximately four million degrees inside. We realized they had an upstairs so we went up to try that, but that was equally packed full of people polka-ing. It would’ve been OK if there was a walk-up bar where you could just order a beer, but they don’t really have that – it’s all table service. We decided to just use the restroom and leave.

We stopped at a shop to pick up a couple beers there, and headed back to have our own Oktoberfest in the hotel room at 10:30pm.

Miles walked: 10.4/104.29 total

Sunday morning, I woke up to what I thought was cheering. I was really confused until I opened the curtains and saw that the Berlin Marathon was going right past our hotel.

We had coffee and checked out of the hotel. Thankfully, the marathon wasn’t blocking the route to the S-Bahn, which we rode from Alexanderplatz to the Hauptbahnhof.

The station was crazily busy, and it was a pain in the ass to be hauling our rolling bags around. None of the machines seemed to want to produce pre-purchased tickets, but someone finally directed us to an office upstairs where that could be done. We went to grab breakfast and sat outside feeding the sparrows on the patio.

We then went to grab some snacks and beer for the train, then went to wait on the platform. Of course I had to go use the bathroom before we left, and ended up standing in line and coming back right before the train arrived. We also didn’t exactly know where to board, since our tickets didn’t really indicate what section we’d be in. It pulled up and we jumped on, and there was a mad scramble of people running around.

An old guy finally looked at our tickets and directed us; we were in first class. We figured we didn’t have time to get off the train and run around to the other end, so we had to haul our bags down the aisle through several cars. Luckily, it wasn’t as many as it seemed, and the restaurant car was in between. We found seats, put our bags up on the overhead racks, and settled in for a ride on the ICE train to Frankfurt.

The ride was incredibly comfortable, and the conductor in first class was an adorable old man. He passed out train crackers:

The ride was about 4.5 hours total. We first went to Hannover, then the train went backwards to Frankfurt. We had a good view along the way, and I got a lot of knitting done.We arrived in Frankfurt shortly before 5pm, and went outside to map the walk to the hotel that was supposedly right by the train station. Well… that wasn’t exactly true. (I think mostly I was too half-assed about booking it, since it was a one-night stay.) It was about a mile away, and we had our big rolling bags. Google also had zero information about public transit for some reason, so we hailed a cab instead.

It was well worth the 10 euros to the hotel, because it would’ve been a long, hilly walk. Our room at the Holiday Inn Express was very small but good enough; it was kind of disappointing after our shockingly nice accommodations in the other two cities. Also, the location was pretty far away from anything. AND Google didn’t seem to know that Frankfurt has buses or streetcars; its only information was regarding the subway, which was nowhere close to us. It was really confusing.

I downloaded a local transit app, and that helped somewhat. But since we were used to walking 10 miles a day and weren’t even approaching that, we decided to walk to dinner. We wanted simple, familiar, and hopefully somewhere we could watch American football, since it was Sunday. Matt found the Champions Sports Bar at the Marriott, and that looked perfect for our very much lowered standards for the evening. (I think mostly we were sad to not be in the awesome places we had been, and I was questioning the decision to spend a whole day in Frankfurt, rather than just flying out of Berlin. Berlin was so great!)

We headed up the hill toward the Marriott. We passed over a million tracks leading into the Hauptbahnhof we’d just arrived at, and passed by a subway station that Google knew nothing about. We walked down a main street that had a bunch of buses Google didn’t know about either. It occurred to us that maybe we were a *little* too reliant on technology.

A mile and a half later, we arrived at the Marriott. Champions was a lot nicer than we expected, and actually had a really excellent menu. And there were sports, but unfortunately they involved the Packers. You can’t always have everything you want.

In case you’re wondering if ‘internet sports pundit’ is a universal stereotype…. the answer is yes:

We had no interest in making that walk back to the hotel, so we got another cab and headed back for the night. It was only 11.5 euros, and totally worth it.

Miles walked: 5.57/ 109.86 total

Monday morning, we made a point of getting up early enough to partake in the free hotel breakfast, because it’s one of those European buffets I love so much – bread, cheese, fruit, and granola. It’s the best. Also, they had a coffee machine that made double macchiatos. Win.

We walked over to the S-Bahn we’d spied the night before, and bought an all-day pass. We rode to the main trainstation, and from there bought tickets on the hop-on-hop-off double-decker bus tour. We didn’t know much about Frankfurt except for the few places I’d been before, and we didn’t have that much interest in researching on our own, either. Sometimes you have to let the experts do the work for you.

Important upper-deck information on the bus:

The bus took us across the river and around all the museums, and then we crossed back to the Altstadt. Matt and I decided to hop off near Rossmarkt and do some shopping. We went to the Bodum store and then Muji, where we wanted to buy everything but restrained ourselves to a few purchases. Then we walked over to see the Römer. I’d been here before but forgot how cute the little plaza is.

Bally wanted a sausage for lunch.

Here’s the actual Römer:

Then we went to see the cathedral, which is one of the few things I have a picture of from my short trip to Frankfurt. So I took the same exact shot:

We did some souvenir shopping nearby, and were happy to find a really traditional Christmas shop with all the wooden toys, ornaments, and cuckoo clocks. We picked up some carved Christmas trees for our parents, and an ornament as a souvenir.

Then it was lunchtime. Once again, we didn’t really care about finding a spectacular innovative restaurant; we just wanted easy. So we went to one of the places in the square with the Römer, and got a table on the patio. It was really incredibly nice and sunny outside, and warmer than in Berlin.

They specialized in extremely traditional dishes (of course), so we decided to try the farmer cheese (handkase). Oh my god, it’s terrible. It’s like weird fermented cheese with vinegar, oil, onions and fennel on top, and tastes like a goat smells. It was only marginally better on rye bread. Gross, Germany. Gross.

Here’s Matt’s gigantic schnitzel with spaetzle. Amazing. I had kartoffelpuffer with herb sauce. Matt also discovered apfelwein on the menu, so he gave that a try. Apart from the cheese, our meal was actually very good.

After lunch, we walked a few blocks to the Main riverside and bought tickets for the 100-minute river cruise (50 minutes each way, up and down the river). It wasn’t leaving for a bit, so we went next door and got a couple apfelweins gespritzt. These are the required serving glasses for apfelwein, apparently:

The boat arrived and we boarded. We went and sat up on top in the sun, which was very pleasant. The boat headed up the Main, passing the Altstadt along the way.

I had forgotten how large and modern a city Frankfurt is. It’s a huge banking center. The riverfront is really nice, too.

We went up to our turnaround point, which was in the working harbor with a bunch of container ships. There were some cool restaurants and outdoor spaces that had been built in reclaimed buildings in the area; it reminded me of the Minneapolis riverfront.

We stopped briefly at the dock on the return loop, then headed off for the downriver portion. When we passed this building, the narrator told us it was affectionately known as ‘the world’s largest apfelwein glass’. Of course.

This is the part of town where our hotel was located:

Once the boat returned to the dock, we went up to see the bridge above, since it was covered in love locks. They’re my favorite – we have one in Cinque Terre.

It was around 4pm, so we did some more wandering in town. At some point we’d probably have to find the ho-ho bus.

Here’s Goethe’s house!

We figured out where the nearest bus stop was after some confusion, and went to wait there by Main Tower. Of course we waited forever, but it finally showed up. We saw the rest of the loop, and rode back to the Hauptbahnhof and disembarked.

Matt wanted to go to Braustil, so we took the U-Bahn a couple stops and then questioned Google’s directions a lot. We examined the subway map and decided to follow that instead. That got us within a couple blocks of the place, so we were happy with that.

Braustil had a little patio and good beers. Not to mention their awesome logo:

We hung out there for a bit, then walked down the street to dinner. Naturbar was one of the most highly-recommended vegetarian spots in the city, so we were glad to be that nearby. It was a small, very nice-looking place. We had a garlic pita with whipped cheese, and both of our entrees were chanterelle-based, since they were in season. Everything was excellent, and we were thrilled to have found it.

Thanks to the Frankfurt transit app, I was able to map a route back to our hotel that involved the S-Bahn and the bus that stopped a block away from it. We got back there around 9pm and went to our room to pack.

Miles walked: 8.88/118.74 total

Tuesday, it was time to head home. We got up at 5:30, which hurt a lot. We had a quick breakfast in the lobby, checked out, and rolled our bags over to the bus stop. We didn’t have tickets (the buses are cash-only), so we crossed our fingers and hopped nobody was checking. We bought them at the train station, so I guess we paid retroactively.

The train to the airport was delayed, and absolutely packed when it arrived. We had to cram our bags on there, and then were melting in our jackets on the way to the airport. It took about 20 minutes to get there, and then we had to walk over to Terminal B. We were able to get our boarding passes from the machine, but then there was a very long wait at the bag drop. (Still, it was robotic, so that was pretty exciting.)

We passed through customs, but security was at the gate, which was kind of confusing because I wanted to get water. We got coffee and croissants at Starbucks, then went through security and discovered there was a little shop inside the gate area. We got water there, plus some German chocolate to bring home.

Boarding happened quickly, and we had the same exact seats as on our inbound flight, in a 2-seat row. I was incredibly thankful to not have another overnight flight, because they make me miserable. I was able to knit and watch movies (Cabaret – having just been to Berlin, AAAGH! – and Money Monster, which was not great). Dinner was cheese spaetzle, bread, and crackers with Laughing Cow cheese. I started the movie London Falling, but after 20 minutes it was so bad I had to turn it off. I switched to Midnight Special instead, then the Imitation Game, which I liked a lot. 

Nearing the US, we had the usual customs announcement, which we ignored, since we have Global Entry. Then they passed out a weird delicious folded pizza snack and a mini red velvet cupcake. American Airlines, you’re alright.

We landed 20 minutes late in Charlotte, but Global Entry was easy and our bags arrived quickly. We had enough time to use the restroom, fill water bottles, and board the next flight to Miami. That one took forever, too, because we had to circle due to weather. Thankfully, we still had plenty of time to get down to the bus garage portion of MIA and board our tiny plane to Key West.

You know what’s not hard to return home to? This place!