Bonn & Cologne

After a few days in Berlin we hit the car once again and traveled to another area where Brandon served his mission. I fell in love with Bonn the minute we walked out of our hotel. Everything about it was amazing and beautiful. Our hotel was right next to this awesome river that we got to walk along and enjoy the sunrise.





See what I mean? Beautiful.
We walked thru town a bit and we did a few things there. They have a really cool museum of Germany's history that we spent quite a while in. It had a lot of neat things from World War II and just a bunch of stuff about their culture. We also spent lot's of time riding back and forth on the same wrong subway trying to find the Haribo Candy Factory. But once we finally found it it was so worth it. I've never quite enjoyed candy as much as I have in Germany. Sooo good. I wanted to buy the whole store. Bonn has a lot of really cool buildings and sites. Can't explain how awesome everything was so here are some pictures!

This was their city hall! Pretty awesome eh?

Next we caught a train to Cologne which was about 30 minutes away from Bonn. I loved loved this city too! Even though we only went and saw one thing there, the city was still crazy! It was soooo big and there were people everywhere! Right as we walked out of the train station, this was the first thing you see staring you right in the face:



This my friends, is the most amazing thing I have ever seen in my entire life: the Cologne Cathedral!!! This was seriously beyond massive. I really don't think I've ever seen anything so big in my life. We went inside and it was so gorgeous. But the best part of it all was when we got to climb up the 532 stairs to the very top! Now these weren't regular ole stairs, they were spiral stairs all the way up in this small pillar where you could very easily have a panic attack if you are claustrophobic. Brandon is such a stud cause he hiked all the way to the top with about 20 pounds (no joke) of candy in his backpack that we had bought earlier that day. What a hottie. We made it to the top and it was well worth it. We had an amazing view of the city and it was awesome!



There was lot's of steps....

Brandon can't believe we're not there yet (I dont even think we were close when we took this

Someone was so nice to have spray painted our initials on one of the stairs for us (I swear it wasn't us)





This was a shot we took looking straight up the cathedral. We still weren't at the very tip top but they didn't let us go that high. Jerks. hahaha

Berlin

We flew into Frankfurt about 6:00 AM and after getting our car and getting everything organized we explored Frankfurt for a little bit just to kill some time. We walked to the main city and Brandon showed me around his mission area. It was so surreal being there and seeing all the places that he'd been to and where he lived.

My first stamp on my passport!!!






We were also able to go visit the temple there too and it was sooo awesome!!! It was actually a nice feeling of being around something that was actually familiar to me. I think I was having quite the culture shock the first few hours we were there.




We then headed the 5 hours to Berlin. Little did we know that after so many hours of flying and having no idea how long we'd been awake, this car trip ended up being kinda crazy! We'd been driving for about an hour when both Brandon and I realized we could not keep our eyes open from being so tired. And being in the middle of Germany we didn't have many options and we just happen to come upon a truck parking area off the side of the road so we hurried and got off and slept for about an hour or so on the side of the German freeway. After that cat nap we were set to go! The cool thing about Germany is they have unrestricted speeds on their freeways, so yes my friends, we could go as fast as we wanted! Which is nice cause that saves you quite a bit of time :) We made it to our hotel, went to bed, and woke up the next day bright and early ready to start our exploring! Berlin has one of the largest zoo's and so we decided to check that out and it was pretty awesome. They had pretty much every animal you could think of and it was kind of intimidating actually cause it's not like American zoo's where all the animals are caged off and safely away from you. Here all they had was this little moat that was separating you from the animals and I bet if they really wanted to, they could jump it.



This dolphin statue made me oh so happy.

This little bird guy was so funny. He followed us around and he would stop and lift of one of his legs and so I'd lift up my leg too and then he'd put it down and lift his other leg and waited for me to do the same. We did that for a few minutes.






This was a really cool cathedral that had been bombed during the war and was still standing. If you look closely you can see the top is gone. They had so many awesome historic buildings everywhere. I couldn't get enough.

Enjoying a German treat standing infront of the same Cathedral. Seriously, I still can't even believe I was there. Everything was so amazing.
Then we went to some historic sites like Checkpoint Charlie, the Berlin Wall (well what's left of it) and a few other places. Berlin was really awesome and really huge!! We could have spent our whole trip there and still probably not seen everything we wanted.






A part of what is left of the Berlin Wall.



Yeah, I was a little exhausted

Pictures

Brandon and I finally got some new pictures taken of us and it only took us 2 years to get new ones..haha. My talented friend Lindsay took these fabulous pictures of us and I am so stoked about them. There were so many awesome ones I just couldn't decide so I picked like a million to post. Thanks a ton again Lindsay! You're awesome!

*Happy Halloween*

This year for Halloween was pretty uneventful. Brandon had a computer programming competition up north the day of Halloween so he was gone pretty much all day. Yeah, kinda sad. I may or may not have been a little upset with him about that one :) Since he was gonna be gone we carved pumpkins a little early this year and had fun doing that. Here is the result of the finished products! Not too shabby if I do say so myself. Note: Of course Brandon carves Mario for his pumpkin. It was between that or a pattern he found of computer code, and I put my foot down about that one. So Mario it was! Which is ok, cause let's admit, Mario freakin rocks. I tried to find a Princess Peach one but was not successful, so I found another pattern that was just too happy of a face to pass up. Happy Halloween!!