Day 3

We walked to the Museum Island hoping to have breakfast in the café of the Historical Museum, but it didn’t open until 10 am. So we crossed the river and had breakfast in an Italian café sitting outside by the river. On the way we saw a building being renovated, and its facade was completely covered with a picture of the building as it will look like after renovation. Very cool. Generally, fences covering construction sites are used to display historical information about the sites under construction. After breakfast, we walked to Alexanderplatz, a huge square with the TV tower, a railways station in the middle and lots of action – food, rides, music, people… We did some shoe shopping. From there we wandered into the oldest part of the town called Nikolai from the name of the oldest church in Berlin. It’s a charming area with narrow streets, lots of small garden restaurants and little stores. It looks like a small German town. Then we walked back to the hotel, stopping at an exhibition about the German parliamentary democracy, and waited for our friends, Phil and Sybill to arrive. They came around 5 pm and we went out to the Gendarmenmarkt, a beautiful square in front of our hotel, and sat in an outdoor café sipping proseco/orange drinks until dinner. We had dinner in an Austrain restaurant Aigner, which had to include asparagus since it’s asparagus season now, and lots of wine. We ended the evening in another café in the square with yet another bottle of wine celebrating Al’s birthday