More Berlin

We start the day with a fire alarm and it is not a false alarm!

It’s on the 8th floor - that’s where Jordan’s room is. So instead of heading to breakfast, we join the other displaced guests across the street.

After several minutes, they determine a guest had turned on a valve that emitted some gas. The fire department stopped the leak and it was declared safe to re-enter the building. So on to breakfast.

First stop of the morning is Checkpoint Charlie.

Next stop the Berlin Cathedral

A walk to the top will get us a panoramic view. We’re in. 267 steps, no lift, a demanding walk, no way back. We give it a try.

Stone, carpet, steel and wood - we get to try every surface.

But the views are spectacular.

Now a stop at the forum to take in the interactive Berlin experience.

Spin the table to a year and then the highlights of that year are played on the wall.

Or smell the scents of Berlin.

Actually DON’T do this..a couple of them are worse than sewer smells - and they take awhile to clear your olfactories.

Inside a dome like below, you could don headsets and dance to all different genres. Jordan got into it. Well we all did.

We stop for a coffee and a spinach and beet ball.

And we head back to the hotel.

A little rest and we are off again. Back to museum island to the DCM Museum. It was another interactive museum with great displays and historical perspectives.

The top left is a depiction of how the Berlin Wall really was. Rounded half domes on the Western side so no one could pull themselves up - a large expanse in between and the the concrete wall with barbed wire on the Eastern side. Each large picture exhibit had doors or drawers that pulled out for more detail on the picture. The lower row center has the timeline of the fall of the communist faction in Berlin. All in just a matter of days in November 1989.

Dinner time! Jordan finds us a steakhouse called the Beast.

We split a very large T-bone.

I still want to see the Brandenberg gate so we detour on the way home. What’s another mile or two at this point.

We pass some more cool stuff on our walk.

A chair made of stuffed piggy animals and a tea party for teddy bears.

We come face to face with a roaming fox ( he was too quick for my camera) at the site of Hitler’s destroyed bunker. Then Jordan finds a very disorienting maze on the way home that we have to navigate, the floor undulated which made it that much more challenging.

And we are done! Almost 27,000 steps and over 11 miles. It’s a wrap,

Let’s see what Jordan has planned for tomorrow.