Day three in Berlin

“It’s actually not raining that bad”

We have a terrible night's sleep and both woke up a number of times, I was wide awake about 2am and couldn’t get back to sleep for ages and typically we have to wake up super early at 6am to head down to breakfast and leave for the Reichstag. We have booked to go up the Reichstag’s glass dome, which is free but worth considering you need to prebook your time slot and we didn’t realise this until a few days ago. So the only slot we could have was 8am or late at night. We head out of the hotel, umbrellas in hand as it’s kind of rainy and make our way to the S-line train to Hauptbahnhof (it’s a few minutes walk from here) as we are walking towards to Reichstag ...

Ashleigh: “It’s actually not raining that bad”

Weather: “hahaha” *about a weeks rain falls down on us*

We didn’t realise 8am was the first time slot, so we also have to stand outside in a queue of people during the heavy rain. You will need your passports to go through as this is a government building and I was so focused on packing the passports that I had totally forgotten to bring the printed tickets. I’m then scrambling on my phone for the email but I have no internet so I have to try and sign into my Gmail account on Ashleigh’s phone (guessing multiple passwords before finally getting the tickets) ... it was a fun 5 minutes. Evil elevator woman

We go through security, walk to the building and are taken up a lift in 2 groups (the woman escorting us looks out the glass lift staring directly at us like we had just hurt a kitten or something) the whole time going up, she looked terrifying to be honest.

The evil elevator woman then took us up the lift and we walked around the glass dome atop the Reichstag. It was a bit grey and foggy and where it had been raining it was actually quite hard to see through the raindrops covering the glass, but it was still really good and the architecture was amazing inside!

We spent a long time looking all around the viewpoints and learning the history of the building on the timeline at the bottom of the dome, before making our way out to the lift down. There was a couple in this packed lift kissing like we were back at Liquidrom, obviously a full glass lift with an angry elevator woman staring at you was very erotic.

Liquid chocolate in your mouth

We head out and walk through a little bit of the Tiergarten, before heading back to the

Brandenburg Gate. It’s surprisingly quiet so we take some photos before heading back over to our favourite place Potsdamer Platz. We walk through the mall of Berlin (to use the 50c toilets in the top floor food court) and strangely I say they really need to have a slide to get down, a few minutes later we discover a huge curling slide that goes from the top floor to the bottom! It’s free and unmanned with just a sign that says ‘slide at your own risk’ so I did.

We head to the Lindt store to get some more hot drinks, Ashleigh has a white hot chocolate and I have a mocha, these are both soooo good… it’s like liquid chocolate in your mouth.

The shop only has a small table and a bench to drink these on but we had great entertainment, the woman who served us was shouting German at another member of staff who had just walked in presumably late and she was in a right foul mood. While we were drinking our drinks, I decided to buy a bag of different flavoured Lindor chocolates and she was annoyed to have to serve me again, then as we were walking out Ashleigh saw sachets of the hot chocolate and asked if we should get some.. “sure but I’m not going up to her again” as we went to the till for a 3rd time, this woman looked like she was going to explode and while serving us she stared out the window for a minute and then started to unpack chocolate bears on a display behind the till. We were just kinda standing there hand out with our money *hipleasetakemymoneyanddontkillme* We then get a train to Gendarmenmarkt, which was being prepared for a huge Christmas market so we couldn’t see much, however we did finally find a Ampelmann store!

The Ampelmann is Berlin's unique green and red man (on their pedestrian crossings) and it’s a big thing out here. The shop sells absolutely anything you can think of with Ampelmann on.... pens, boxers, deck chair, sweets, wallets, water bottles, mugs, footballs, literally anything from sunglasses to shot glasses. On the way to Alexanderplatz I somehow manage to lose a glove at the train station so we think it’s a good idea to go to Alexanderplatz Primark to get a cheap pair... this was not a good idea and after battling our way through the store to find gloves... I see the queue and decide I would rather have a single cold hand.

The most steps we’ve ever done in one day

1pm we have been at it for 6 hours now so we headed back to the hotel for an hours rest before heading back out for lunch. We eat at an Italian called ‘Al capones’ which was actually really good! Although the chilli oil left my mouth with almost no feeling. We head back to Alexanderplatz as we wanted to try the Illusion Museum, however we forget it’s a Saturday and the queue outside was massive so give it a miss. We head over to Museum Island again and then make our way across to Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, shockingly it’s under construction and there’s also a christmas market being built around it, so it kinda looked a mess but was worth seeing inside.

We wander around the shops but again it’s Saturday and the crowds of people are horrible also my feet are completely done for (we have walked over 29 thousand steps today! The most we have ever done in any trip) we head back to the Potsdamer Christmas market to get another huge cheese pretzel before going back to the hotel. We have some Lindt chocolate, share a pretzel, I have a bath and then we drink some wine with our feet up. Perfect end to a busy day. We finished on 32,786 step (21.7km)