Sunday night we decided that relaxing was in order. We went down the street to a small Italian restaurant and had some pizza for dinner, then returned to the room to watch a movie on the laptop. "Being John Malkovitch" was very bizarre, but lots of fun. At that point we were pretty awake so we started to plan out all the things we wanted to see on Monday. Rick looked through the guides finding interesting places and Randy located them on the map and figured out the best route to see them all.

We planned on getting up somewhere between 9am and 11am (depending on which of us you asked).

At about noon on Monday we realized that we had missed the continental breakfast at the hotel, and that we needed to get moving. We walked to the West, marveling at the architecture. We saw so many different styles of buildings that we had to give them their own page.

The Germans don't mess around, if you need a pipe between two places but don't want to bother ripping up the cobblestone streets, just put the pipe up on 10 foot poles and run it down the street!
(Note the pipe running over Randy's head in the background).

We had a list of music and clothing stores to see. Many of them were small out of the way places, some were along main streets. We mainly just had fun walking around and talking about the sights.

Those tiny little "Smart" cars are so cute!

One of the record stores in particular was very difficult to find. We felt like we were on a scavenger hunt!

"Hard Wax", a record store, was found through two small courtyards off a small street, then it was on the third floor of this building!

We had organized things so that we walked for a while, then took a train to the next area, walked some more, took a train, etc. That gave us time to rest while we rode the subway. The nice thing was that we never waited more than about 3 minutes for a train. Very stark contrast to Muni in San Francisco!

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Our last stop was at PottsdamPlatz, the new center of the city. There's a huge "Arkaden" (arcade or mall) with lots of very western looking stores, along with some very German touches. In the middle of the first floor was some sort of medicinal display, and there was beer on tap being served to a very large crowd... we had no idea what the occasion was, but it looked fun.

There's a huge construction boom going on.

We hopped back on the subway and headed back to the hotel. We had been on our feet nonstop for the better part of 7 hours. We were both in a great mood, but definitely ready for some time napping and snuggling.

This one's for Tracy... Was Jen here recently?