Europe Part 3 - April 7 - 18, 2015

April 7 - 12, 2015 - Arrived in Amsterdam today and took a taxi to our rental apartment.  Stayed here for 5 days.  Very interesting city.  All centered around canals which are everywhere.  Also found that it was quite chilly here and had to bundle up to venture out.  Did a tour bus of the city as well as a tour boat through some of the canals.  Very friendly people.  Bicycles everywhere.  The most dangerous thing in the city is the bikes.  You have to watch out for them whenever you are out.  The country is flat and that makes it easy to bike everywhere and everyone rides a bike.

 

 

 

Springtime at the flower farm.

 

 

This is the largest garden display in the world and it is immense and very colorful, even though the tulips have not bloomed outside yet.  The ones in the greenhouse did.

 

 

 

April 13-15, 2015 - Berlin Germany.  Drove across Holland and most of Germany to get here.  Nothing much to see as far as scenery.  It is pretty much just flatland just like Ohio.  It looks like we were travelling along the Ohio turnpike except that there is no speed limit outside of towns on the autobahn.  Since I have a small rental car ( VW  Go), I chose not to drive too fast.  I stayed mostly under 100 miles per hour and was passed frequently by cars going MUCH faster.  Still took all day to drive here. 

 

This was a divided city just 25 years ago that had the east Berlin (communist)walled off with guard towers and orders to shoot anyone attempting to cross over to the west (democracy).  The walls were torn down in 1989.  Some sections still stand as memorials.

 

 

The Brandenburg Gate.

 

Parliament building.

 

Glass dome visible on the parliament building.

 

Old sections of the wall.

 

Checkpoint Charlie.

 

Mosaic design on building.

 

Sections of the wall that have been  made into art works.

 

April 16 - 18, 2015 - Warsaw, Poland.  Another all day drive to get to Warsaw through flat scenery.  Nothing to see but we traveled at almost 100 mph all the way.  Got to Warsaw during rush hour when they had also closed a major bridge that we need to cross for construction.  Spent more than 2 hours fight rush hour traffic unable to read the signs or get any help from our gps navigation as it tried to get us to go back across the closed bridge and would not find an alternate route.  Got to the hotel that was on the east end of town and near nothing.  The weather was cold and we could not find anything of interest in Warsaw as it was completely flattened in WW II and was hastily rebuilt after.  Unimpressive. 

 

I have no photos of Warsaw.  This was a very boring city.  Nothing worth taking a photo of.