Day 1: Take 2, sunshine, soup, and sushi!

Since I arrived at 8am and my room wasn't ready until 2pm, I had some time to kill around Berlin. I decided to check out the tram and make my way to the Tiersgarden, which is roughly the central park of Berlin. It was a BEAUTIFUL day, sunny and hot, and I enjoyed walking around the park and eventually settling on a cool place to sit and relax with my ipod.

On the walk around I found an interesting little soup restaurant, and definitely had some flashbacks to the Seinfeld soup nazi when the woman didn't speak any English and ended up just giving me a bowl of whatever soup she felt like giving me since I couldn't understand or choose anything.

It was delicious!! It was some kind of tomato-based soup, with a little bit of kick, shitake and portobellow mushrooms, and pieces of gnocci thrown in. So yummy! A very interesting little place, and I guess not very touristy since there was no English to be found on the menu.

After my walk around and little nap in the park, I went back to the hostel to see if my room was available and it was. Yay!

This hostel is SOOOO nice! I would totally recommend it to anyone, it is clean and spacious and perfectly located, the staff is also super nice. The room is great, with 5 beds and a small balcony with a cute view of Mitte (the area where we're staying).



So, I took a little nap, and was woken up 2 hours later by my new roommates, Emily and Brady from Canada. They were super cool, so we decided to head out exploring together.

Emily is way into shoes and fashion, so we walked around and peaked in boutiques, and then finished by this big dome church on the river. It was beautiful, we walked around that area for a while and then decided to have a drink and this SUPER cool place on the river bank,with tables and comfy lawn chairs on a grassy knoll overlooking the water.



We stayed around there discussing politics for a few hours before heading out to find some food. All of us were craving japanese, so we foudn this AWESOME japanese restaurant not far from the hostel where I finally got my fill of noodles, sushi, and shrimp dumplings, oh and don't forget the edamame! All for a very reasonable price, so far Germany seems cheaper than France on the food front of things.

A leisurely walk back to the hostel and here I am, contemplating if I have enough energy to go out tonight. Probably not, it is close to 11pm and I am thinking a shower and some reading will be perfect to get in form for tomorrow.

On my list if Clay and Rachel are up for it- bike tour of the city during the day, maybe apertifs on one of the boats tours on the river in the evening, and a pub crawl or adventure in the evening. We'll see!

So far, Berlin is awesome! And I love the hostel and my new friends, yay traveling!