Baker European Trip: Last post

Last post of the Baker trip!  I'm only two months behind...

We got back to Zurich Thursday night and everyone was pretty wiped so we spent Friday staying close by.  Darren took his family to the Lindt Chocolate Factory store and then we went souvenir shopping in downtown Zurich.  We ended the day with a delicious meal at Zeughauskeller.  The next morning Darren's siblings left to go back to the US, while his parents stayed a few more days.  After we dropped off his siblings, the four of us went up to see the Rhein Fall.  The weather wasn't great, but we all still enjoyed it.

The Rhein Fall near the German and Swiss border

Can't let a little rain ruin your fun!

Me and Darren's parents

After visiting the fall, we drove back home to have some lunch and then went a little south to visit the town of Solothurn.  Darren's dad had wanted to visit the armory museum there, so we were finally able to.  I think he really enjoyed it.

Darren's dad at the armory museum

Lots of old armor and weapons

A cool-looking cannon

Darren's parents outside of the museum

The inside of a cathedral in Solothurn

A view of the old town of Solothurn

An old gate in Solothurn

The next day, Sunday, we went to church and just spent time at home.  On Monday, we drove south again and made our first stop at the LDS temple near Bern.  We just walked around the grounds and took pictures.

The LDS temple near Bern

After that, we spent some time in the city of Bern.  Darren and I had never been, so we were happy to go and see the sites.  

The Federal Assembly building, the seat of power in Switzerland

Bern famous clock, the Zytglogge

So after this point, I was in charge of taking pictures and I changed the settings on the camera somehow, so all the pictures were taken at a really small size.  We didn't notice it until two trips later, so pictures are going to be smaller and not as sharp for a while. :/  Way to go me...

Downtown Bern

The Aare river

 A bear statue with a fish in its mouth on the river, so cute!

Cute bird on the fountain

Another picture of downtown Bern

The bear park on the river, because the name Bern comes from the German word for bear

A view of Bern on the other side of the bridge

I really liked seeing the bears (no surprise, huh?), but since my bear pictures are really small, I'll just show you a video instead.  Luckily all the video was still shot in high quality.

The other side of the Federal Assembly building, really a pretty building

We couldn't spend the whole day in Bern, so we were only able to see a few highlights.  I really would like to go back down and explore the city in more detail and visit things like the Einstein Museum.  After getting a quick lunch in Bern, we drove down to Lake Geneva so that Darren's parents could see the Chateau de Chillon.  If you recall, we visited this place with my dad and step-mom, so I won't go into much detail about the place since I've already talked about it.

Me and Darren's parents in front of the castle

Darren's dad next to an escape route in the cellar

Exploring the upper floors up the castle

A view of the castle and the mountains

Darren in front of the castle, to prove he was there at all these activities

After all the fun activities, we drove back to Zurich and went out to a fondue restaurant.  The next morning, we took his parents to the airport and the Baker European Tour was over!  Wow, we did a lot things, but I think everyone was really pleased with what we were able to see and how well things went.  For everything that we crammed in, we really never had any major problems and things went pretty smoothly.  Way to go Baker family!

Baker European Tour: Berlin

Darren is pretty busy with work, so I don't know when he will have time to get to the next post about Denmark, so I will just have to move on and we'll add that post later.  Yes, I am still writing about when the Bakers were here back in August.  After we went to Denmark, we stopped in Berlin for two days on the way back to Switzerland since the cheapest tickets connected through Berlin anyways.  It's becoming hard to remember all the details, but we all had a great time in Berlin, so I don't want to miss out on sharing it.  

Brittany had to get back to the US, so she left from Denmark to go home while the rest of us flew to Berlin early in the morning.  We dropped our things off at our hotel and walked over to Museum Island, which is the name given to the northern half of an island in the Spree River that runs through Berlin because it has a lot of museums.  Also on this island near the museums is the Berlin Cathedral, which was built many centuries ago, but was heavily damaged in World War II.  We toured the inside for a bit as our first stop in Berlin.

The Berlin Cathedral

The beautiful altar inside the cathedral

A view from the upper pews

 A view of Berlin from the cathedral dome

Our next stop was to the Pergamon Museum, which houses the archaeological finds brought back from German excavations of the Near and Middle East during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.  The museum is named after one of the largest pieces excavated from the ancient Greek city of Pergamon: the Pergamon Altar.  One of the best things about the Berlin museums is that they all include an audio guide free with your admission ticket.  I felt like the experience at the museums were enriched with so much more knowledge and insight into what we were looking at because of the audio guides.  So we spent some time at the Pergamon Museum learning more about Greek, Roman, and Middle Eastern culture.

Part of the grand Pergamon Altar

The huge Market Gate from the Roman town of Miletus

The beautiful Ishtar Gate built by Nebuchadnezzar II, my favorite piece at the museum

After lunch, we went to the Neues Museum (New Museum).  The names of the museums in Berlin are quite confusing and do not have anything to do with what is housed inside, except for the Pergamon Museum.  The New Museum actually holds Germany's ancient Egyptian collection.  Berlin is also such an interesting city to visit because it has been dramatically shaped by more recent history.  Most of these collections in these museums were split up between East and West Gemany, but were finally reunited in the 1990s.  The museum buildings themselves also serve as a reminder of Germany's past with shrapnel scars left on the walls from WWII, which you can see below.  It's interesting how these ancient pieces came to these museums in the early 20th century to be preserved, but then were damaged by modern history events.

An original wall inside the restored museum that still has shrapnel scars from WWII

This was once an Egyptian temple, but only the outer wall paintings remain after WWII damage

An ancient Egyptian artifact

We spent a few hours seeing the Egyptian collection before leaving Museum Island to walk down the famous street in Berlin called Unter den Linden.  At the end of Unter den Linden is the Brandenburg Gate, one of Berlin's most famous sites.  The structure was built at the end of the 18th century at an entrance into the city.  In 1806, Napoleon occupied Berlin and stole the sculpture on top of Brandenburg Gate and took it back to Paris.  However, after Napoleon's demise, the sculpture was returned and a close replica was put in its place.

A picture from Unter den Linden of Berlin's famous television tower

The US Embassy next to Brandenburg Gate, it moved to this location in East Berlin after the Cold War

Darren in front of Brandenburg Gate with the Quadriga sculpture atop the gate

 A picture of the arch in Paris with the replica sculpture with minor changes

 Our final stop that first day was to the Holocaust Memorial, which is just on the other side of the US Embassy.  It is made up of dark grey stones of various heights that symbolize (not sure how) the six million people who died in concentration camps.

Part of the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin

The next day, Darren and I went to an art museum called the Gemäldegalerie while Darren's family went to the Checkpoint Charlie Museum.  We stopped by a few Cold War sites on the way to the art museum, though.

All that is left of Checkpoint Charlie, the border crossing between the American and Soviet sectors

 A large section of the Berlin wall close to Checkpoint Charlie

A painting of Kronborg Castle, a castle we visited in Denmark

The Colosseum in Rome

The Glass of Wine by Jan Vermeer, 1662, one of my favorite painters

Woman With a Pearl Necklace, Jan Vermeer, 1664

Madonna Terranuova by Raphael, 1505

I just loved the Gemäldegalerie.  Not only were some of my favorite artists there, but they had a great audio guide, and you could take pictures!  The Berlin museums are very impressive.  Afterwards, we met up with Darren's family again and fit in a few more sites before dinner time.

The German Parliament, or Reichstag

A new Berlin Wall Memorial site outside of downtown that just opened up

Buildings along the new memorial showed what the buildings looked like during the Cold War

We also went to a small museum that featured life in East Germany, Darren in a Trabant

Darren's family went to dinner while Darren and I ran over to quickly see the Jewish Museum.  We had heard that it was worth going to, so we wanted to fit it in before we left.  A lot of people enjoy the museum for its modern architecture.  After going through it though, we felt the Israel Museum in Jerusalem was much better, but if one had never been to that before, this would be a good option.

An example of the modern architecture at the newly built Jewish Museum

After a full day of sightseeing, we grabbed our things from the hotel and went to the airport to fly back to Zurich.  Berlin was fantastic, I'm so glad we got to go!