Continuing to Explore Berlin

As we continue to walk along the banks of the Spree River in Berlin, we find lots of great art on the buildings of the city and small parks in the neighborhoods offering rest and recreation.

Along the Spree

Neighborhood park

Buildings as canvas

A few blocks south of the river, we find Markthalle Neun, which first opened as a food hall in 1891, getting its name from being the ninth of fourteen market halls in Berlin.  This market has everything!

Markthalle Neun

Heading northwest, in the general direction of the Brandenburg Gate, we reach Checkpoint Charlie, the site of the legendary border crossing between East and West Berlin ("Charlie" because it was the third border crossing to be set up).  The guardhouse and sandbags are preserved in the middle of the street, with a small museum nearby.

Checkpoint Charlie

Pictures from the time

Continuing on, we find the contrast of old and new architecture intriguing and delightful the way the styles merge and complement each other.

Old and new

Ant then, there's the truly new, such as the British Embassy, behind the US Embassy.

British and US

Across from the US Embassy is the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe set in what used to be the "death strip of the Berlin Wall,"  2,711 concrete blocks form a grid pattern with themed rooms offering background on victims of the holocaust.

Memorial

Walking past the US Embassy, we return to the Brandenburg Gate (on the west side this time) and the Bundestag, following the other side of the river past the government offices and back toward the train station.  A series of seven crosses serve as a memorial to all those who lost their lives fleeing from East Germany to West Germany when the border was closed.  (This bank of the river was in West Berlin and the river was in East Berlin.)

Brandenburg Gate, Bundestag

Memorial

German government buildings along the river

Crossing the river, we return to the Berlin Hauptbahnhof to catch a train back to Hannover.

Hauptbahnhof

Looking back at Berlin from the station

Catching the train

Soon, at 300 km/hour (186 miles/hour), our train is charging across Germany to find other adventures.

Wandering Around Berlin

We are staying in Hannover, Germany and decide to make some day trips around Germany, starting with Berlin, about an hour and a half train ride away.  Exiting the Berlin train station, we come across a group of workers protesting, many of whom have arrived from all over Germany on the same train and several others.

Protest at the train station

Leaving the station, we follow the River Spree past the the modern buildings along the river housing the German Government, then the Reichstag Building, home of the Bundestag, the national parliament of the Federal Republic of Germany.  The Reichstag was built in 1894 to house the Imperial Diet (Reichstag) of the German Government, was damaged during the wars, and was rebuilt in 1999 to house the Bundestag.

German government

Reichstag

Look up the Spree

Leaving the river we approach the Brandenburger Tor (Brandenburg Gate), where the demonstrators from the train station have gathered to march down Unter den Linden to Pariser Platz just in front of the Brandenburg Gate.

Protest marches

Brandenburg Gate

Heading down Under den Linden away from the Brandenburg Gate, we reach Museum Island, a complex of five museums on the northern part of Spree Island.  Built from 1830 to 1930, this has become one of the most important museum sites in Europe and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Wandering past the museums

Also on Museum Island, the Berlin Cathedral (Berliner Dom) was consecrated in 1454 as a Roman Catholic Church and now serves as a German Evangelical Church.

Berliner Dom

Across the river, the Berliner Fernsehturm television tower rises 368 meters (1200 feet) above the city and is visible from much of Berlin.

Views of Fernsehturm

Crossing the Spree on the other side of Museum Island, we find the Marx Engels Forum, a park created by the German Democratic Republic in 1986 to honor Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, authors of the Communist Manifesto in 1848.

Leaving Museum Island

Marx-Engels Forum

Continuing along the Spree to the east, we wander through a delightful community on the river, with apartments, house boats, locks and restaurants.

Continuing along the Spree

We continue our walk through Berlin to see what we can find for our next posting.

Dinners in Paris

Although we're only in Paris for a few days, we enjoy some fabulous meals.  We return the Le Passage St. Honoré near our hotel, a restaurant that we stumbled into on a rainy night on our last trip a few months ago.  We start with foie gras and onion soup, followed by margret de canard accompanied by creamy potatoes with truffles and roasted chicken breast with mushroom risotto.  It is dark in the restaurant, so the photographs don't give justice to this fabulous meal.

Fois gras, onion soup

Duck, chicken

For breakfast, the hotel self-service buffet is a victim of Covid, but we are able to order assorted plates of our favorites:  cheese plate, charcuterie plate, bread plate (2 bread, 2 croissant, 2 chocolate croissant), along with cappuccino and fruit.  This really gets our day off to a great start.

Breakfast

We also return to our favorite duck restaurant in Paris:  Il etait une Oie dans le Sud Ouest, where we dine on foie gras, cassoulet, and margret de canard.  Yummm!

Foie gras with fig sauce

Cassoulet, margret de canard

For our last dinner in Paris this trip, we return to Le Passage St. Honoré for foie gras, margret de canard, and filet of sole.

Foie gras

Margret the canard, filet of sole

We've truly enjoyed our weekend in Paris and are now off to Germany, the main reason for this trip (Paris is just a bonus stop).