Ich liebe Berlin.

Despite our not so great experience at the end of our last trip here, I've come to really enjoy this city. The Hilton here has a lot to do with it. We were able to upgrade to a nice junior suite, and with our continued Diamond status, we've been able to get some super extras.

The status gets us into the sauna and spa in the hotel free of additional charge. For everyone else, it costs 13.50 Euro for a day pass. Totally worth it, by the way - it was really nice. They had warm and cold waterfall showers, a huge dry sauna (much more spacious than ours at home), then they had an aroma sauna (which wasn't dry - it was super steamy), and they even had foot baths setup. OH - and a "relaxation room" which was a room with soft lighting that changed colors. There were five or six beds setup - waterbeds - that were warm - and you could just hang out there all freaking day if you wanted. Super duper relaxing.

Another bonus: apparently this week is Hilton Honors week, and Diamond members get free use of the mini bar! Our dinos have been taking advantage:

Matt kept giggling, saying how strange it was to be able to have mini bar drinks, after nearly 30 years of training that tells us otherwise.

 This guy really had his eyes on that vodka.

 Yup....

The regular perks include access to the Executive Lounge, which I've gotta say is one of the nicest we've been to. Here's only half of it, where I've been doing plenty of homework and paper writing this week.

Not only is it incredibly large, the food is always great - good selection of breakfast, tea time snacks, and evening snacks. In fact, you could really get away with not eating out at all if you wanted to - the evening snacks, which run from 6-8pm, include two hot items (so far I've seen chicken fingers, mini quiche, meatballs, pastry puffs, and chicken skewers), plus assorted cheeses, bread, crackers, veggies, and nuts. This is when they also break out the bar with beer, wine, spirits and even sparkling wine. 

There's two coffee machines and I can't tell you how many tea varieties I've seen. The tea time snacks are more on the sweet side, though, and run from 3-6pm. They've had marble cake this week in addition to little bite-sized brownies, tiny cheesecakes, etc.

Since breakfast stops at around 10am, it means I've been on my own for lunch which I've taken advantage of. On two of the days so far, I've headed over to the Galeries Lafayette, a huge French department store. On the bottom level they have a mini food hall, including a great sushi cafe.

Mmm, sushi.... I very much enjoyed this spicy california roll.

The food hall is kind of perfect, too, because you can find items that we've had to travel all over France, London, and Belgium to find - but all in one place! So convenient to stock up on our favorite stuff:

Soo yeah. We've been enjoying things so far. Matt's been having a pretty good conference too. Wednesday night we went out to a burger place called The Bird and ohmygosh it was great. (This was after we had some dinner snacks in the lounge to warm up, of course!)

My drink was the cocktail of the week, the Moscow Mule - ginger beer, vodka, lime.

 Not only were the menus in English (listed first), but we knew we were in for a good time from the cards setup on the tables. We both elected for the Medium.

I had a patty melt - the burgers in Europe tend to be ambitious in the amount of filling and the bun usually falls apart. Problem solved with a patty melt - tons inside but the hearty bread keeps it all together. Love love love.

Yum and yum. Last night we went out for burritos to a place called Dolores. We were there in December too, and it's really the only place we've found in Germany that can do a decent take on Mexican.

I like getting the bowl - because a ton of fresh corn chips come on top :-)

But yes, we'll be back soon after we enjoy more of the Hilton, and I go to the gym some more as well.... it's been convenient to just go down two floors to get in my workout.

Happy weekend, everyone!