Early awakening and out the door by 8:00 a.m. Our six hour trip by train was without incident, except the train was split in two halfway through the trip. Luckily for us, the man checking our tickets advised us of this; otherwise, we would have found ourselves in Nuremburg instead of Munich! So we changed cars and enjoyed our last first class train ride in Western Europe. It's always entertaining to watch second class passengers get kicked off when their tickets ...

When we got up, the next morning, the kids had a great breakfast, and headed out for a free walking tour. In Berlin, the family metro pass for the entire day was 15 Euros; very reasonable, as far as we were concerned. We took 2 trains and came out at the Brandenburg Gate, where we met a wonderful tour guide. She was half Japanese, half Swedish; had modelled in Paris; fell in love with a German rock star; moved to Berlin; fell out of love with the rock star, but i...

Time to bid a sad farewell to the Netherlands! We enjoyed our stay, but far more importantly, we had a chance to gain some weight back with great meals and to get some good sleep. Hostels are great, but it truly is a new bed each night. When you stay with family, you aren't listening for every noise or worrying about when to wake up (Margaret doesn't have a watch, so when we're staying in separate dorms, she has to ask whoever wakes up first what time it is). We...