Welcome to the Beer, Bears and Bratwurst in Berlin trip report!
I’m Abby, my DH is Dave and we have 2 children Max (14) and Kate (11). We love a city break in October half term and this year we were trying out Germany as we’d never been before, specifically Berlin. We like walking and each day we had a tour designed by me to take in the sights of the city.
The clocks went back overnight, but we didn’t have an early flight as the return flight wasn’t until 6pm and check out was noon so we weren’t in a rush to get ready.
Earlier in the week Dave’s eyemask had gone missing (he likes complete darkness when he is sleeping and often hotel rooms are not as dark as he would like). He had said to us that he had a clear memory of putting it into his bag one morning and then when he went to get it out at bed time it wasn’t there…we found the eyemask behind Kate’s suitcase while we were packing up. We found it quite funny that he had a ‘clear memory’ of putting it in his bag and yet there it was behind her case which was over the other side of the room to his bag. I managed to laugh quite a while at that.
Rather than be pleased it had been found I think he was actually a bit cross as he’d already spotted a potential replacement on Amazon which was much better and now he couldn’t order it as he didn’t need it.
We had a plan for the day that included some of our highlights of the trip.
I wanted to revisit the Holocaust memorial and try and get as many bear photos as possible. Max wanted to go to a play park in Tiergarten park. Kate wanted to go to the trampolines near the TV tower. Dave wanted to eat traditional Bavarian food one last time as he had a hankering for either schnitzel or goulash if it had dumplings with it.
So, off we went to the Tiergarten. Max was satisfied with his choice and it was a good park.
They tried to complete the obstacle course without falling off.
In the last photo the log Kate is on was spinning and so it was quite tricky to walk across. The kids enjoyed the park.
We did manage to visit the Holocaust memorial briefly.
We wandered up the Unter den Linden towards the TV Tower to fulfil Kate’s request.
I was pleased as we spotted a couple of bears we hadn't seen before.
There were already some little children playing on the trampolines, but I had spotted a bear.
The boys had a little rest waiting for the trampolines.
We didn't have to wait long before there was a free trampoline.
I had a go on the trampolines and so did everyone else.
Then we walked back across the river heading towards to Maximillian’s for lunch.
Again, we went a different route and spotted a couple of bears and a bear shop.
It was another cold day and quite windy again, but it was dry so I think we'd had pretty good weather really overall.
The restaurant wasn't busy and we found a table easily.
I had the Bavarian sausages with sauerkraut and mash with a glass of beer.
Dave had goulash and dumplings with a glass of Merlot.
The kids both had pork schnitzel with fries and salad.
Then on the way back to the hotel we went to the Back Factory to have some pastries for pudding and to buy some snacks for the plane.
The boys both picked out something for later, Dave had a sandwich, Max had a sausage roll.
Kate had wanted to go to Lidl as she had seen they sold sushi so that was her choice for the flight home, but we hadn’t realised it wasn’t open on Sunday. So she was a bit upset, but I said that we would be able to find something she would like at the airport.
We picked up the cases from the hotel and took a taxi back to the airport.
We spotted one last bear and I couldn't resist getting a photo.
After going through security I went to the shop with Kate and she found some sushi and a cheese covered pretzel.
The flight left just after 6pm, we had a lot of turbulence on the flight home and the seat belt sign was on most of the time.
We caught the APH bus back to the car park. There was quite a lot of rain on the journey home, but we got in around 9.30pm. We were tired but we’d had a fun trip.
Steps today: 22,793
Total for the week: 160,688 steps – not bad really. For us on holiday this is below our average as we only had 1 day where we topped 30,000 steps and the others all hovered around 22,000.
We like walking around a city as we really feel that we get to know it better, we get to see some of the less touristy areas and we stumble upon some interesting buildings, statues and parks on our travels.
We had a great time in Berlin and did manage to eat a lot of sausage, drink a fair amount of beer and see a large number of bears! I would highly recommend Berlin as a short break, we enjoyed our time there and it was a really interesting city.
Thank you to everyone who has taken the time to read our Berlin Adventure. I hope you enjoyed it.