Friday morning and the start of our first full day in Berlin, with probably the longest buffet breakfast display I have ever seen; an amazing display of hot and cold cereals, fruit concoctions, pastries of all sorts, assorted meats, smoked salmon, several cheeses and heated dishes of eggs, sausage, bacon, mushrooms, plus multiple omelettes cooked to order. It would be tempting to spend our four days grazing there, but we have a city to see, so....
Off we walked to Alexanderplatz to meet our city cycling group under the tower which at 368 meters is currently the tallest structure in Europe. A straggle of around forty people gathered around the welcome flag before we were divided into two groups and we followed our guide Alistair around the corner to the bike shop to chose our steeds for the next few hours. After a few saddle height tweaks our raggedy line rode off in roughly single file to visit several of the city's main attractions including The Reichstag, Brandenburg Gate, Tiergarten, Gendarmemarkt, Checkpoint Charlie, Berlin Wall, and Museum Island. Part way through our roughly four-hour tour we stopped for lunch near the Tiergarten zoo, which gave us time to meet and talk with some other members of our multi-culti group.
When we returned to the bike office it was 3:00 and the weather was beginning to warm. All morning had been windy and chilly, often threatening rain. Now that we had a sketchy idea of he city's layout we set off to revisit and photograph places we had seen from our bikes.
Restaurants seem to be closed or well hidden. With advice from the hotel concierge we set off with a map. The sun was lighting up the Reichstag and the crowd was thinning so we stopped for photos and I lost the map. We finally found dinner but it included a lengthy walk!
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