Bring on Berlin!

Our first foray into Europe ...and how cool was it! We had an excellent time and came home absolutely exhausted!

After having a slight delay at Gatwick (about 3 hours) we finally got to Berlin.... We raced (racing being the operative word) into town in a taxi - we are pretty sure that he did in fact have our safety at heart.... yeah right! Anyway checked into our hotel and crashed! Saturday it was all on! We were up and out pretty early in order to get to Friedrichstrasse to join a walking tour. The walking tour was amazing! I would highly recommend doing this - we were out and about all day seeing the sights and learning about the history, for 12 Euros this was a bargain! Our tour guide was really onto it and very interesting! We went everywhere.... saw the Reighstag, Brandenburger Tor, Pariser Platz, The Wall, Checkpoint Charlie, Jewish Monument and even such highlights as the hotel where Michael Jackson hung his baby over the balcony and the bridge where part of the Bourne Supremcy was filmed...
We headed out that night for dinner to a restaurant in Kurfurstendamm - Germans do everything big! Our meals arrived and each was enough to feed a small army! They were huge and when we finished some of the meals didnt even look like the had been touched! We then wondered the streets in search of cake... to no avail - we had to settle with beer instead! Bugger!

Day two started even earlier and we headed to the Reichstag again to go inside, then on to the Checkpoint Charlie museum which had some amazing stories of both successful and failed escape attempts! Next stop was the Potsdamer Platz which is a huge centre with entertainment and cafes to sit and enjoy... After strolling down the Unter Den Linden we headed back to Kurfurstendamm with the vision of heading out on the town! We jumped on a tube to go to a club we had heard about that had alsorts of highlights including fire breathing dragons.... interesting I know! but never made it there... part way through our journey Shane spotted a market that looked pretty cool so we jumped off for a nosey. This was awesome! we ended up grabbing dinner from a street car and sitting in a beer tent drinking, talking and watching the world go by - the place was mental - packed with so many people, different food, drinks, market type wares on display... awesome atmosphere! We ended up finishing at a hard rock cafe next to the hotel before heading home for a nigh nigh's!

Last day and we headed to the Zoo! Not before wandering down Kurfurstendamm and happening on the Tour of Berlin! Cyclists out and about racing through the city - again something cool to see... The Zoo was great - Liv wanted to see the baby polar bear (Knut) but the lines to get near the enclosure where horrendous so we never quite got there! The plan when we left the zoo was to do a spot of shopping before heading to the airport.... the problem was that Monday was a stat holiday for them too ... nothing was open! Oh well we just had to sit down and enjoy cake instead.... bugger!

All in all Berlin was wicked and we would go back in a heartbeat!