Hello Berlin!

Tuesday, May 17, 2011

This morning we arrived in Berlin at 6am and we promptly made our reservation for the overnight train to Munich for Thursday. This time we remembered to request the bottom bunk since we've been on the top bunk on our previous night trains and it makes it difficult to get up and use the bathroom or really do anything!

After making our reservation we headed to our hostel to put our bags up. The hostel is in a great little neighborhood and seems to be fairly quiet. It has free wifi and we have a private room which is awesome.  We mapped out our strategy for the day and headed out for breakfast.

We were both really hungry so we went to a sit down place to get something other than bread and coffee. The meal was amazing and after being in Denmark it seemed so cheap! We took our time since it was raining and we were meeting a walking tour just outside of the restaurant.

The walking tour we did was fantastic, the guide was so knowledgable and went at a good pace. Our guide, David, was very friendly and was even able to give us some great restaurant suggestions in our neighborhood. On the tour we hit Museum Island, Unter Din Linden, the book burning memorial, an amazing chocolate shop, the wall, checkpoint Charlie, the bunker where Hitler killed himself, Brandonburg gate and we could just make out the Reichstag.  The walk gave us a good sense of the things that we wanted to go back to and the things that may not be for us.

After the walk we took the subway down to Potsdamer Platz which is where the 4 sections pf Berlin came together, now it's full of new skyscrapers and a mall. From there we walked to the Gameldegalerie, the cities fine art gallery. We ate in the cafeteria before heading in.

The museum has some worls by Rembrandt, Rafael, Vemeer and many other artists, particularpy Dutch and German. It was a beautiful museum with a good free audioguide.

After the gallery we came back to the hostel and officially checked into our room. After relaxing for a bit we headed to il due forni for what we were told would be authentic Italian pizza made by punks. They didn't lie, it was amazing!  Best pizza I've ever eaten!

Finally we went to bed exhausted but ready to do it all again the next day.

Suzie :-)