Our second full day was quite busy. It consisted of the Wall & Lifestyle Tour and the Westend Tour.
This post is going to be mostly pictures with a little bit of commentary here and there. After a long and tiring day, we decided to take a boat tour too. It was nice to sit and relax before we tried to navigate the S- & U-Bahns to find our way back to the hotel.
We missed the last tour bus from the Checkpoint Charlie museum and had to make our way to the closest U-Bahn station and I thought I had read the map correctly. We got to Friedrichstraße station and realised that it wasn’t as straightforward to get back to the hotel. I tried to ask for directions but the language barrier prevented it. We headed out onto the main road and got the boat for an hour. I finally found our way once we got back to the station.
Wall & Lifetsyle Tour
The highlights of this tour were as follows:
– Mauergedenkstätte
– East Side Gallery
The GDR used the mosiac on the building to spy on its citizens. They put windows in the mosaic – can you spot them? You can also see the wall and the watch towers that were used along the death strip.
Here are the pics.
Westend Tour
This was the second tour we took today. We had live commentary and the tour guide sang to us a couple of times. It was refreshing from the rubbish pre-recorded commentary. It was quite different to the other tours we took in Berlin. You can definitely tell the difference between East and West Berlin. It is most notable in the architecture.
Here are the pictures from the tour. There was no one particular highlight from this tour.
Boat Tour
We took this one mostly to get off our feet. I went to get the tickets and kicked over some woman’s drink. I mean, who puts a drink down on the ground where people walk. I did feel bad for her though.
It was nice just to sit and relax on the river (Minus the loud, and somewhat tipsy ladies on the boat too – shouting at their friends as another boat passed us).
Pics below
