The Rest of Our Time in Berlin

Brad went off to work, Piper and I finished up a fabulous breakfast (love the Hilton and their breakfast included) and headed over to the Reichstag. It is Germany's Parliament building. They have this awesome dome that you can go up in and see the entire city! Also, the que starts before 9 and can be 90 minutes to wait, UNLESS you are handicapped or have a stroller..score!! No line and no wait, we went through a separate entrance! Once you get to the top you get an audio guide and you walk up a spiral ramp hearing about all the sites, then you go down a separate one, totally cool.

Then we power walked over to Checkpoint Charlie.



Good thing Piper was in the stroller because I power walked down to Unter den Linden and despite the fact it means Under the Linden, as in trees, there aren't that many anymore. Still a nice walk, past Humbolt University, and Bebelplatz, which is where the Nazi's burned 20,000 books. There is a Plexiglas hole in the ground and when you look through it you see a subterranean rows of empty bookshelves. There is this cool monument to Friedrich II that was erected in 1851.




We cruised around by Berliner Dom and then Piper and I, tired of being outside, ducked into the Deutsches Historisches Museum, which is right there next to Humbolt University, and houses all of the history of Germany. It was pretty cool, Piper loved the different 'suits of armor' from Egyptian through WWII. It really was a very interesting and I highly recommend it to anyone visiting Berlin.

Okay next I will show you what is around our hotel...Gendarmenmarkt...it is awesome. On one end is the French Church, it has a tower you can climb, Piper declined every time I asked so I never did it. In the middle is the Concert House, we looked in and were able to see an orchestra rehearsing. On the side closest to our hotel, is the German Dom. We toured it, Piper was so-so impressed, and we came out and ate curry worst at the curry worst stand. It's a pretty cool plaza across from our hotel.







Let me show you the awesome chocolate store; Frassbinder and Rausch...look at what we saw there, imagine the chocolate we ate and brought back from there!






We got to see some great museums, like the Neues Museum on Museum Island. The building and it's history is a story in itself and the artifacts it housed, wow! We saw, in the North Dome Room, Nefertiti. It was pretty cool.
The museum next to it had to be my favorite, it was called the Alte Nationalgalerie and it has a whole floor dedicated to Impressionist. I was able to see more of the water lily paintings and more Claude Monet's and Renoir's, and the famous sculpture, The Thinker.





One that looks like Uncle Jay and a favorite painting of Brad's. I think we all loved this museum.



Next we went to the Berliner Dom, awesome doesn't even begin to describe it and we had just been in Notre Dame a few days before. In this church we could climb 270 steps up inside the Dome itself and we were rewarded with a beautiful view of the entire city!






this is what the inside looked like:









What do you do to top that? We went to the Berliner Fernsehturm, which is the TV Tower in Alexanderplatz. It has a 360 degree view from 203 meters. It was a quick trip up too, 203 meters in 40 seconds! We were thirsty by then:



Then we enjoyed this wine with dinner:


Okay at this point we knew we were not going home, so we spent the next two days having a little more fun, and the weather was great! The Berlin Zoo and Aquarium are easy to get around, had great places to stop and eat, and up close views of the animals. Here are a few of our favorites:
















Then we went to the Aquarium:





I haven't mentioned Dr. Paul Ragsdale, he works in S&T DHS with Brad. Paul was our traveling partner from the minute we all realized we were stuck in Berlin and needed a way home. Since we couldn't get a car, with a one way drop off, until Tuesday, we booked our flight home on Thursday from Madrid. Paul went to the Zoo and Aquarium with us, and then the next day we walked around Alexanderplatz a little more and enjoyed the sun. We had lunch in an outside cafe along a boardwalk that sat right next to Berliner Dom, it was a great way to spend a Sunday afternoon. Please note the fountain people playing with their dogs.







Since Monday was our last day in Berlin, we walked to Tiergarten, the park, and visited the Soviet War Memorial, and like all things Soviet, the entrance has two T34Tanks and on top of the memorial wall is a Red Army Soldier. There are some 2500 soldiers that were killed in action in Berlin buried there.







We wandered through Brandenburg Tor again, and met a bear:



Tried to hitch a ride to Paris, it seemed like a good alternative:




Found someone with a bigger, and longer nose than me, and Piper hugged her little green friend that she wanted to bring home with us.





While strolling through Alexanderplatz one more time, we stopped at a department store, large by most standards, it was smaller than most I have been in while in Europe. However, the food market was outstanding, I only got a few pictures, but this is the general idea of what they look like in Europe in department stores. The KaDeWa has over 1,400 different types of cheese, this place had a pretty impressive candy display as well as gourment section.






This concludes our time in Berlin, and you know what? I would go back and see more, there were museums we didn't see, places we could have eaten at (need to hit the Hard Rocks next time),and more bears to see.