June 30, Berlin

Slept in, and then tried the free breakfast at the hotel. LOVE IT! This was similar to what was served at the hostel in Krakow. It's what I think all breakfasts should look like. Just for fun, I made a list so if I ever have a ton of money plus a ton a time to fix breakfast I can serve this up.


Milk, juice, coffee, scrambled eggs, fat little sausage patties, long thin wurst, pickles, mozzarella balls, mushrooms, slice of butter cheese, a cheese board with three more fancy cheeses, aufschnit (which is a selection of salamis), sliced peppers, black olives, tomato cucumber salad, basket of hard boiled eggs, yogurts, butter, cream cheeses, liverwurst, bowls of dried fruit, nuts, four kinds of breakfast cereal including cornflakes and muesli, a selection of breads, good german rolls, some sweet breads, fruit cocktail and a tin of cookies.  I LOVE Germany.

After feasting, we took the train back to the Hard Rock Café area. Love the train posters.

We went back to Kaiser Wilhelm church,

we still couldn't see the ruined part, but we did get to go into the new part. Amazing looking--huge blue glass windows, a polka-dot floor and a live organist.

Catherine wanted to go to a nearby by store that was selling dresses for only 9 euro. There was also an Ampelmann store. The Ampelmann are a story. These are the stop and go people shaped street lights on traffic corner.

Some time ago the government decided to change the shape of these "Ampelmann." The public went ballistic. Now the Ampelmann are iconic and there are souvenirs everywhere. Anyway, my ankles still looked scary so I decided to rest while they looked at souvenirs.

 No such luck. The Christmas store was right in the area and now it was open and I couldn't resist. WOW! WOW! WOW!

 My favorite section of the shop. I love the wood.

Amongst a thousand other wonders I found a gorgeous woodcut for 200 euros. I texted Dave to come look to see if this might be THE souvenir for us on this trip. We decided to think about it.

 While looking for dresses Dave found these beauties. Daisy Duke meets Maria Von Trapp---I dunno.

The lederhosen weren't much better.

Yikes. I followed him over to the Amplemann store. We bought some cute little things and had a drink in their café. Then we took one of the double decker buses to Check Point Charlie.

Much smaller than I imagined. There were soldiers staffing it, whose sole purpose was to pose for the tourists. Across the street was a little exhibit that had a small part of the Berlin wall and pictures, also an exhibition with a bigger piece of the wall for a price.

We skipped that, and walked the 5 minutes to see the 100 meter section of preserved wall.

  Interesting, with lots of posters of information.

I wanted to see the Topography of Terror museum, but we all thought we'd better have lunch first and none of us fancied another curry wurst.

Even if there were charming little chairs and flowers by it.

So we went to Potzdamer platz

On the way Catherine finally found the spaghetti Eis she'd been looking for the whole trip. 

We also passed one of the original watchtowers from the Berlin Wall. We opted not to pay to go to the top. We probably should have done if for no other reason than that the climb would have been short.

Cool manhole cover

and found Andy's Diner and Bar "a premier sports bar and grill." They served up huge hamburgers and sandwiches with cute American Flags.

Their nachos were much better than the Hard Rock nachos. Fortified, we wandered around Potzdamer platz just to look.

Inside the huge mall.

A "Lego World" was here too. Catherine went back later, after we had left to fly home and tells us we didn't miss much. Giraffe is cool.

We skipped this attraction.

Then we walked through Marlene Dietrick Platz and saw a pretty "piano Lake" and fountain.

We took the train back to the wall and saw my Topography of Terror museum. This was billed as a must see sight on trip advisor, but I was disappointed. It was free, so it's difficult to complain, but it was just big pictures and information about the war. Also, it was not air-conditioned. We were all hot and tired and so decided to go back to the hotel for a rest. But on the way to stop and see the Ostbahnhof (East train station) where another part of the wall had been preserved with the graffiti intact. It took forever and a lot of walking around the station and grounds to find it, but we did find it and it was interesting and we even got to add a little graffiti ourselves.

It was a long trip back to the hotel, but we got there in the end and did rest for a few blissful hours.

This was my favorite subway stop----the one right by our hotel. At the end of a long day it was a wonderful sight to see.

We got up around 8:30 and got back on the train to go to the Brandenburg gate area, grabbing a some dinner at the train station.

Train Bear

And a window display at the station. (I think my sweetheart doesn't love me anymore)

The real goal was to be at the Reichstag at 10:15 for a light show, but we had time to see the gate again in the moonlight. Simply beautiful.

We went to the wrong side of the Reichstag, but we heard the sound of the show beginning and ran (or hobbled in my case) to the viewing area. Quite an impressive light and sound show was projected onto the building about the history of Germany.

Once again, the neat transportation was already at the destination where we wanted to go so we couldn't use it.

It was a beautiful evening with a cool breeze and a spooky moon.

It was such a nice evening that we opted to walk to the Hauptbahnhof. We had a little trouble finding the 2nd train that we needed, but got there in the end.