London weekend

Not long after coming back from the Northern Ireland, it was time to visit London. As I have never been to a really big city like that, I was actually looking forward to it.
Got there Saturday around lunch time and the plan was just to walk around and see as many touristic attractions as possible, which most are located along the Thames.
Of course I was impressed by the architecture of the bridges, churches and everything else. That day we probably walked well above 20km, which meant that the feet were a bit sore that evening :)
I was planning to do lots of evening pictures, but since we already had walked a lot the only places that I got to were the Palace of Westminster, London Eye and Big Ben.
The second day we moved away from the tourist attractions but lets talk about that in the next blog :)

St Paul's cathedral

St Paul's Cathedral

Millennium bridge

Hms Belfast

Hms Belfast

Tower Bridge

Tower bridge

Tower of London on the right

Skyscraper

Leadenhall market

Toilets

London eye

Palace of Westminster and Big Ben

Piccadilly circus

London eye in evening sun

Night time

Big Ben

Big Ben

                                                                      

'Quick' visit of Berlin

Last weekend I was for the first time in Berlin, with very low expectation on actually liking the city but was very much positivly surprised.
Only the inner city contains beautiful monuments, historical buildings and sites, museums etc. So much to visit and see. The aim was to visit the top ten recommended and actually made it (the feet were a bit sore) To be honest, only to visit the 'Neues museum' where they have the bust of Nefertiti is worth going to Berlin, amazing collection of Egyptian artifacts.
The whole of Berlin is a mixture of new and old from all different decades, amazing mix that absolutly gives that extra to the city. A closer look at Berlin's old buildings there are marks of grenades, cracks after bombs and at some thousands of bullet holes.
Another thing I very much liked about Germany in general, was the food :) and of course the beer. Not only had a 'Eisbein' (boiled shank) but also their country dish 'Curry würst' :)) So much like UK.
Recommend the city for sure!
Next post, back to USA and this time we are in Grand Canyon.

Brandenburger Tor

Victory Column

Ampel man

Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europa

Oberbaum Bridge

Berlin Wall

Neues Museum

Berlin Cathedral

The Pretzel guy

Parliament House

Checkpoint Charlie

Mitte

 

Road Trip To Scotland (Part 2)

We had planned to have the whole day Saturday on the Isle of Skye, which is needed because even though the island is small it takes time to drive around in order to see all the interesting stuff. We did the round trip starting along the east coast towards the north and then down along the west coast.

Along that stretch were 5 top tourist attractions;
- Old Man of Storr, which is known for its weirdly shaped rock pinnacles. But here we just took photos from far way, because we wanted to hike at the next place...
- Quiraing. Here we stopped for a couple of hours to go hike along the pillars and the mountains. The view from here was amazing.
Unfortunately one of the places that we missed after Quiraing was Kilt Rock. We were relying on mobiles a bit to much, and we actually didn't have connection at all except crappy one during lunch on wifi at a pub.
We had a map reader (me) but he missed it ;))
- Anyhow, next stop was Coral Beach, which despite its name is not actually coral but pieces of dessicated and sun-bleached algae's. This is the only "nice" beach on Skye, but who wants to swim here when the average temperature during summer is +14C and approx. the same in air :))
- Just before Coral beach there is a castle Dunvegan, which we also visited. Very nicely located at the sea and have amazing gardens.

Now, it was late afternoon and we had one more visit left 


- Neist Point, which is a lighthouse at the tip of the west side of Skye. Very cool too.
From here you can see the outer Hebrides, which are the last stop before Greenland and Alaska. We stayed here to watch the sunset and again got disappointed when it disappeared behind the clouds.

So that was our day, and now the only thing that remained was to drive back to the hostel and dinner.

To see and do everything should on Skye, you need at least a week. We now just drove around most of the time. There is still so much more to do here, like hiking, fishing, scouting for wildlife as otters, sharks, dolphins, orcas and a lot of birds.

Quiraing

Quiraing

Quiraing

Do u see me on the top the rock formation ;)

Coral Beach

The Old Man of Storr

Neist Point

Neist Point

The Black Cuillin hills

Black Cuillins in the distance