Just So You Know. . .

After a tasty breakfast and checking out of the hotel, we headed back to the old town to do some sightseeing. We started out at the Niederegger marzipan store. Lubeck is famous for its marzipan and this is the biggest manufacturer of the tasty, but rich, sweet treat. On the third floor of their store they have a small museum that tells the history of marzipan in that area along with many figures made of marzipan.

Marzipan Holsten Tor

Largest marzipan figures in the world

almost look real, don't they?

We did quite a bit of shopping in this part of town. We bought scarves, soccer memorabilia, shoes, a tie, and presents for friends at home. We also bought some fresh strawberries from a produce stand and were they yummy! It was strawberry season, so they were for sale everywhere we went on this trip. This was the only time we bought some, and they were pretty darn tasty :)

We walked by the Marienkirche but couldn't go in since there was some sort of meeting going on. We stopped by the devil statue outside for a quick photo before moving on to the Heiligen-Geist-Hospital. The Holy Ghost Hospital is supposedly the best preserved medieval building of its type in central Europe.

Marienkirche

The boys outside the Marienkirche with the devil statue

Heiligen-Geist Hospital

Window inside the hospital

The outer section that is a church

The inner section that was the hospital/hospice Each door opens to a tiny cubicle for each resident

We needed to get back to our car (the parking meter was nearly up), so we opted for a quick lunch at McDonald's. I know it sounds like a cop-out to some, but Carson has a goal to eat at McDonald's in every country he visits, so that's where we ate that day. After leaving the old town, we set off to find Aubrey's missionary apartment, Walderseestrasse 55. Then we swung by the church, which happened to be open with someone there. We stepped in for a few minutes before heading northeast to the beach.

Missionary apartment on 2nd floor

ahh, the memories :)

Lubeck Chapel

The beach is on Lubeck Bay, which is a bay of the Baltic Sea. We didn't really park that close to where we wanted to be, so we had quite a walk. It was a nice walk, and since it was Saturday, there were lots of people out strolling with their dogs and kids. Once again we were in a time crunch because of parking, but we did see the water and the kids ventured further along and actually got on the beach and touched the sea. We also had yummy Magnum ice cream bars on the way back to the car :)

The Baltic Sea

We had a couple hours of daylight left when we got back to Berlin and the sky was clear (something that wasn't in the weather forecast for the rest of the time we were there), so we decided to go to the television tower (Fernsehturm). It's kind of pricey to go up the tower, but you can see all over Berlin from up there. At 1197 feet high, it's the city's tallest structure. It was close to sunset, so we waited around a while to get some sunset pictures before going down to find an interesting fountain just off Alexanderplatz. Then we headed home for bed, cuz it had been another full day and we were tired!

TV Tower

It's a turtle!