BERLIN (early this year)
For a long time i wished to land in Berlin. I finally did it in the beggining of this year for a cold weekend break in Germany. Fast cheap flight and arrive to our hostel amid a few danger moves on ice. Tried one of this "free" tours through Berlin for almost a whole day. Spanish version ..hehehe. It was quite entertaining, with this spanish guy talking about and explaining a few things on the city and it's history. We walked around the main part of the Easter Berlin for a few hours passing through the Brandenburg Gate, the jewish memorial, checkpint charlie and so on... and a chocolatier that looked amazing and made us comeback by metro on our final day there. It was so sleepery on the sidewalk that it made it dificult to walk around and extremely tiring also. Loads of photos. A few weeks before heading to Berlin i got me and Anna two tickets for a movie session on the Berlinale film festival "El Mal Ajeno". It was in original language so that was much better than german language that i do not yet master. I may be getting back one day . Who knows?
LISBOA (May)
Surprise, surprise! Everyone knew but me. For my birthday, my Anna sent me on her company to Portugal, Lisboa. My soccer team (Benfica) was about to win their first championship in 5 years or so and i was there to witness it live on Estádio da Luz. I remenbered perfectly the last time we won , how we hit the streets horn screaming out loud. First we had to infiltrate the stadium .. we had 2 tickets to diferent parts of the stadium and that wasn't good ... so, she jumped the fence and just entered without any problems. It was a lousy lousy game .. but , we won! So it didn't really matter cause we were all happy. Maybe i was happier than somebody else ... after horning my way up to the center of Lisbon i met Flip,Paula,Frade, Sara and the guys for the street party that followed the championship win. It was Great!!!
MARRAKECH (June)
We went to Marrakech for a few days of relaxing on the swimming pool. I found a nice place on the outskirts of the city (15Kms) that made us feel we were in heaven. Birds singing, 3 swimming pools and rose petals everywhere. That's what we call life. One day we also went with a guide to the center of Marrakech to wonder around the old city. We only had 1 day to spend there, that's why we tought of going there with a touristic guide. He took us to the Royal tombs, one amazing palace that in the begining just seemed like nothing and in the end it's wonderfull, with gardens and decorated rooms. We also went to one of this carpet places where they tried to sell us something we did not want. I'm not a carpet person i must say .. but after a tea and a couple of unconfortable moments we safely arrived to the final NO, thanks! We went for some chicken (again) and afterwards hit the souks on our own , so that we could be harassed as much as possible by the people trying to sell stuff. We bought a pair of things , including Babuskas hardly fought for. Were they too expensive? On our last night i asked for a triple chocolate cake from our hotel and they delivered big time ...cause it was absolutely delicious . hmmmmmm