Wait - We're NOT Going to Spain?: And So It Begins - Our Love For History, Museums, Big Cities, And Beer

Berlin is one of those cities. It's huge. Sprawling, actually. And its attractions are spread from one end to the other - they're not all crammed into one city center like many European cities. It's just big. And dense. Buildings are squeezed together like so many books on a shelf. Old against new, mysteries against historical, business against cooking. I know. Kind of a weird metaphor, but it's true.

After a good night's sleep Wednesday, we slept in Thursday. Jet lag's a little bitch. We finally headed out to lunch at BrewDog Mitte (downtown). We'd been there before; they have good pizza. And good beer. We didn't want to spend too much time deciding what to do, so we went with a known entity. Sure enough - good pizza and good beer.

Bellies full and whistles wetted, we began to plot our course. First stop: The Biererei - our favorite tap house in Berlin (maybe the world) and our favorite barman, Cihan. He had some great stuff on, so we dove in.

It was great to be back on one of his bar stools. We had delicious beer, good conversation, and a surprise serving of pistachio baklava from a shop next door. There's a large Turkish population in this neighborhood, and Cihan had a craving...so he treated us to a specialty.

And proving the diversity of the above-referenced hood, we had Pho for dinner after leaving the bar. (Also delicious.)

Fresh pillows and continued jet lag led us to a nice sleep, so today we set out for German food. After all, that's part of why we're here. We walked from the Brandenburg gate to a little restaurant we'd been to before, but they were having thermostat issues and were closed. Good thing we spotted the Augustiner am Gendarmmarkt. Augustiner is one of our favorite mainstream German beers. And the beer hall didn't disappoint. Edelstoff beer, Nuremburg sausages and fried potatoes, and Apple Streudel.

We then took a nice long walk - we definitely needed one. We came across a chocolate shop (didn't buy anything today, but will return with our sweet tooth in tow.