A stop in Germany

Our 3rd port was Warnemunde, Germany, a quaint resort town on the Baltic Sea. We didn't opted to not see the cute town, and headed down to Berlin, about a 2.5 hour drive. We had a van pick us up and drive us around all day. Our drive down was through some beautiful green countryside! We also stopped at the NICEST rest stop I have ever been too. No pictures though.

When we got to Berlin, we met up with our guide outside the Charlottenburg Palace.


After a brief chat about the history of the palace and some general info of how the area was pre and post-WWII, we hopped back in the car and drove through some more of West Berlin. There was some beautiful architecture!
We saw this neat church and wanted to see it. It was heavily destroyed during the war, as you can see, so the new church was built with the nave on one side and the rest of the church on the new side. The new church is very modern with lots of blue stained glass windows.


Inside the old church--

Inside the new--

One of our next stops was to this:

We didn't go inside, due to lack of time. The number of blocks is just what fit, not to represent anything, but they are all different sizes (because no 2 people are the same) and none of them are level as life is always uncertain.

Then we headed over to the Brandenburg Gate, post-war:

post-post war:

evidence of the war:

We walked over to the Reichstag (the Parliament building that burned in 1919(?)) and has been restored. I wish we had had time to walk around the ramps in the glass dome on top of the building.


Each of these represents a Parliament member killed during WWII. It says their name, years living, where killed, and something else (I think which party they belonged to).

We visited a part of the "wall". We skipped the popular East Side Gallery and went to a less touristy part, but a part that wasn't all covered in graffiti. Here's one side of the wall:

Through the cracks, between the inner wall and outer wall, we saw this:

and this, also notice the tall stainless steel wall:

this is the other side of the steel wall, meant to represent the passing of time:

The other side of the wall, which is 4th generation (they were always working to strengthen and reinforce the wall):

We saw a lot more buildings around the city and our guide shared the history of them, but we didn't go in them.



We quickly visited Checkpoint Charlie, one of the checkpoints between the American and Russian sectors. This was used only for diplomats, military, and such.


After doing some quick shopping, we made our last visit to the Airlift Memorial.
We dropped off our wonderful guide and drove back to the ship.
Chris tried escargot for the first time, but my tummy didn't let me. We were also entertained by Beauty, the Beast, and servers who can do lots of flips as we dined in Lumiere's restaurant.