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29 April, 2000 - We drove to Berlin, it took us 6-7 hours. The
first place we found was the Olympic Stadium. Afterwards, we went to Charlottenburg Palace.
Inside,  there is are a couple of exhibits
that we paid to go in and view. One section is paintings from the romanticism
period. There were some really nice paintings in there.
Donna's sister, Pam, was trying to get a closer look at one of them and
set off a proximity alarm. She didn't touch it or the wall,
she just leaned in too close. Upstairs, we were able to walk through
the rooms of the palace. Can you believe that there were
actually two separate ball-rooms? One of them was more lavishly decorated
than the other. Guess that it was reserved for people who were a
little more important than others.
After we left Charlottenburg Palace, we found our way to a pedestrian
zone. In the middle of the area was this big building with part of
it's top missing. We later found out that it is a memorial
church. We found an information center at the pedestrian zone,
inside bought a map of the city, asked about and got directions to a
campground, and picked up a flyer for a walking tour around the city.
The time was starting to get late on us, so we made our way to the
campground and set up the tent. We wanted to be well rested for the
tour the next day.
30 April, 2000 - We got up and packed away our camping gear.
Back at the pedestrian zone, we got breakfast at a McDonald's. The
flyer said that there were two pick up points for the tour. One at
McDonald's, and the other in front of the train station next to a
bank. We were going to wait at the McDonald's, but decided to walk
down the street a bit to the train station. It is a good thing we
did, because there was another McDonald's around the corner. We had
not oriented the map to the ground. Had we done so, we would have
realized sooner that we had been in the wrong spot. We met up with
our tour guide and began what was suppose to have been a three hour leisurely
stroll around Berlin. Well over four
hours and a brisk walk (the kids, had to nearly run
at times), the tour ended halfway across town. We had to pay
to ride the train back to where we had parked the van. |
