Our trip wasn't all bad, I promise. Berlin is quite a lovely city, especially when we hit a mini heat wave (for December, anyway). It was a lovely and bright day as we started our walking tour on a Monday morning.
We passed the Deutscher Dom on the way, as it's right across the street from the Hilton:
The tours meet at the Brandenburg Gate. Matt pointed out the U.S. Embassy (you can see the flag in the center of the picture)
All decked out for the holidays...
For a protest. Because what capital city would be complete without some awesome protesting infront of whatever United States building that's closest? Feels like home to me.
This was the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. Very moving. You can't tell, but the blocks are all different sizes, and nearer to the middle the path declines and you end up very isolated. Matt and I walked through separately on another day.
During the tour, we stopped by a section of the wall that was still up.
We also stopped at the site of the old Nazi bunker. It's still under there, but it's boarded up. On the surface it's a parking lot now. Take that, Nazis!
Later we walked by Checkpoint Charlie.
Our tour concluded on Museum Island, in front of the Berliner Dom. See what I mean about the beautiful skies? (You can also see the TV tower they built).
Anyway, after the tour we traveled to the other side of the tracks (quite literally - we had to cross under a train station) to get to lunch. I had researched the best place to get a burrito in town.
And boy did we find it. I opted for the bowl (with delicious freshly made chips covering the top) and Matt got the traditional version with habanero salsa.
Dolores is delicious and as funky as Berlin.
Next we decided to go and tour the
Topography of Terror, which is an extensive exhibit on the rise of the Nazi party, on the site of their former headquarters.
By that time we were pretty spent, so we headed back to the hotel. The Hilton Berlin has an executive lounge, so we had a lot of nibbles and drinks for dinner.
The next day we decided to head to Museum Island. Here's Matt in the Pergamon Museum. Can you believe all those stones are actually blue, not painted?
And here's me:
We also went to the New Museum (aka the old Egyptian Museum) and saw the bust of Queen Nefertiti.
On the way out we got this shot of the German History Museum, which might look familiar to some since Hitler conducted many a speech in front of the building way back when. Probably without the crane, though.
The afternoon was a giant sugar-induced coma. We went to the Ritter Sport Chocolate World, where you can design your own chocolate bar. Here's the bar for that:
You decide if you want milk or dark chocolate, then pick up to three ingredients. While we were waiting, we checked out the store and went upstairs to the cafe.
Not only did we get hot chocolate (which was a melted Ritter Sport bar with whatever flavor you want - I got peppermint, Matt got yogurt), we got this lava cake. I got a bit of a headache from all the chocolate.
After our afternoon sugar fest, we rested for a little while and headed out to dinner at an Italian restaurant. Pretty good. On the way back we stopped at Checkpoint Charlie for a closer look.
Here's the other side of the sign.
Some super nice tourists snapped this picture of us.
The center of the building is this glass tower thing, that you walk up along a winding staircase. Really good views when the skies are clear.
Here's the view from the top, looking down. In the center is an actual parliamentary session going on.
From down below.
Don't adjust your screens, I did not selectively color the flag here. It's just that gray outside.
After this we stopped in at Galeries Lafayette, the French department store. I saw some great placemats the day before that would be a perfect match with our blue chairs in the dining room, so we got them. They had a great food section as well, with macaroons and a bunch of items from France that we had seen earlier in the year. Too bad we couldn't buy it all!
The afternoon was dedicated to the Technical Museum. While some parts of it were so-so (like the below shipping section), others were more interesting.
Like all the cool planes.
Swastikas all over the place.
Wait, what? Is this a joke??
NO IT'S NOT! IT'S A STAIRCASE FOR HORSES! OH HOW COOL!!!
In the train wing, we saw all this neat paraphernalia for the old train lines.
And the train tracks!! We figured they had to build the museum around the tracks (it's a pretty large building).
So yeah, those are the sights we hit in Berlin. Oh, and I forgot to add these lovely pictures that Matt took to the post earlier this week. Enjoy.
