Shopping in Berlin.

The next morning, we began with a walk a few blocks down to a museum, The Story of Berlin, which could have been cool under different circumstances, but neither of us were particularly interested in it, so we breezed through it.

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Our plan of attack was to hit up the shopping on the street, since we were staying in a classy area. The first stop was Diesel, a no-brainer, where the pants were incredibly cheap (100 euros here for a pair as compared to 300 dollars back home) but none of the pants that I liked were in my size, so instead I got a new purse which was on sale. I also got my official German soccer jacket, which I'd been searching for everywhere and finally found at - duh - Adidas.

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Once those purchases were complete, we were off to the Berlin Zoo. Let me tell you: this zoo is amazing. Absolutely awesome. The landscaping is gorgeous, there are so many different animals, and all the animals actually appear happy. They have plenty of room to roam and aren't confined like other zoos I have seen.

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Next we went on a shopping excursion to Berlinomat, where Rich had suggested Elia go, and along the way, she picked up a great new dress at F95. We quickly had to head out to meet the group for dinner, so we made our way down near Alexanderplatz where we had another relatively subpar dinner of vegetables covered in cheese (thank goodness for the beer). After dinner, we skipped out on the whole group's trip to Potsdam and instead went to a nearby shopping mall (the first cool mall we found in Europe!) to cool down and walk around. After hitting up all the floors, we caught a train and began our walk back to the hotel, where Elia came across some shops and I made a new pug friend named Rocco who wanted to follow me back.

Since we weren't in a huge rush back to the hotel, we stopped off at a restaurant and hotel nearby our hotel and had a couple drinks and enjoyed the evening air. Then while she took a shower, I went out to the nearby store to pick up some beer and candy, and we watched "American Pie" on my laptop, before the both of us turned in for the night.