Our first day in Germany resulted in not doing much. We had an early morning flight from Stansted. If you know the airport, you will know how awful it is getting through security to the gate.

We had an ok flight to Berlin – the landing wasn’t anything to write home about. It felt as though the pilot sped up when landing and it was a VERY bumpy landing coupled with what seemed like an eternal taxi to the gate. Immigration and customs was fairly straightforward.

We got out of the terminal and didn’t realise there was a bit of a hike to the S-Bahn station there. We missed the next available train due to long queues at the few ticket machines they had there. We didn’t have a long wait for the next one – thank goodness. We headed to our station. I thought I knew which one to get off at but it was the wrong station by 1. We wanted Schöneweide and I took us to Betriebsbahnhof Schöneweide – an easy mistake to make.

We had about a 20 minute wait until the next train. We eventually got to our station and didn’t realise it was a hike from there to the hotel. What we didn’t realise was that there was a tram from the station to just across the road from the hotel – this came in handy for the rest of the trip.

We checked in and Jamie slept. I was too excited to be in Berlin, so I bought a travel card and hopped on a few different trams for a few hours. I realised at this point that I could make it in a big city again.

Tip
You can buy a daily ticket for the Bus, Ferry, S-Bahn, Tram & U-Bahn in zones A & B for €6.90. This lasts until 03:00 the following day.

We went out in the evening to Alexanderplatz. It was nice just to sit there in the sun and chill.

We took the City Sightseeing bus on both days. This post is about the first day. I can’t really do it justice with words, so it will mostly be pictures with a few captions and the highlights of the sightseeing tour.

Tip
Whenever you can, take the live commentary tours. The pre-recorded commentary is truly one of the worst I have ever heard!

Route:

1. Tauentzienstraße/Ecke Marburger Straße
2. KaDeWe
3. Potsdamer Platz/Ecke Kӧthener Straße
4. Martin-Gropius-Bau (Mauerreste)
5. Checkpoint Charlie
6. Gendarmenmarkt
7. Park Inn Hotel, Alexanderplatz
8. Alexanderplatz (Alexa)
9. Rotes Rathaus/Neptunbrunnen
10. Lustgarten/Museumsinsel/Altes Museum
11. Brandenburger Tor
12. Hauptbahnhof (Washingtonplatz)
13. Siegessӓule (Großer Stern)

It was really surreal to see Berlin after having only seen it in TV shows. Pictures below.

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