Germany Day 9 – The fast train to Berlin

Unfortunately I awoke this morning feeling pretty poorly and blocked up in the sinuses. Hoping it doesn’t come to an infection but I do struggle with sinus problems these days. We woke up at 5.30am got dressed and finished packing and went downstairs to check out. The taxi the hotel had booked for us was waiting and it was a quick 5min drive down to the train station. Which meant we were rather early and had to wait around for a bit. There was a man and dog sleeping nearby. Not a golden but he was very cute.

Finally we headed to the platform, not really sure where to stand. We were in carriage 14 so headed to what we thought was the correct end. When we spotted someone from the DB we asked and she said we had to go right to the other end. Of course, right then the train came in so we ended up walking rather fast and running up to our carriage. I arrived feeling rather out of breath and sick in my stomach – I’m sure due largely to this possible sinus inflection my body is fighting. Then, as you’d expect, the train stayed for another 5mins !!!

I had prebooked seats in a compartment and even though (the internet) told me I could only book 2 of the seats, we had the whole place to ourselves… for the whole 6.5 hour trip.

Feeling yucky as I did it was nice to just relax, watch little German town and bigger cities go past the window, and catch up with all my favourite blogs.

When we got hungry we ate some of the prepacked lunch the hotel had given us this morning. There was so much in there. 2 cheese sandwiches, 2 pieces of fruit, a yoghurt, a cereal bar, a choclate and a bottle of water… for each of us!

At some stage during the trip I was offered a tea (you had to pay but they went and got it and bought it back to your seat). Later on Kevin went to fetch one for me. They have a dining carriage but we just nibbled on our own food throughout the trip.

Shortly before we arrived in Berlin they bought around a chocolate for us. I’m guessing we won’t be getting this in 2nd class (next week with the school) :-).

Finally we arrived in Berlin.

Then we discovered we were not at the correct Berlin station and had in fact gotten off the train too early.

We were told where to catch another train…which as it turned out would take us through to our final destination (we were going to have to change trains anyway). And later I discovered our ICE train was running late and we would have missed our connecting train, so everything worked out in the end and it didn’t even cost us too much time.
I was starting to feel a lot better by the time we arrived at our final stop…

where we spotted a golden…

It was about a 5min walk to our hotel. We stopped along the way to enquire about a segway tour in English. They quoted us almost $500 for a private tour!!!! No surprise we decided not to do it.
Around the corner we found our hotel – the Radisson Blu Berlin.

We got checked in and were able to go straight to our room. It’s really lovely and our last treat accommodation before we move into youth hostels tomorrow night.

Do you want to see what made me choose this hotel (other than it’s location)? This is the view from our room…

Yep, that is a giant fishtank/aquarium in the center of the lobby. How cool is that?

We got our electronic gadgets charging and headed back out. Unfortunately we didn’t really have a plan and I wasn’t feeling great again.

We ended up in the “wrong” museum but bought a pass that lets us get into most of them.

Then we went to a cafe (in one of the museums) to get a late lunch – as it was now almost 3pm. We both had empanadas – Kevin’s with meat, mine with vegetables.

We had thought to do the Egyptian museum and maybe the Jewish museum (since it was open later). Amy would have loved the Egyptian museum. Our biggest problem was that much was in German. We did get the English audio guide but it was incredibly long winded. You would have to be there all day to listen to the commentary. So it was a bit of shame really. We’ve done other museums where you get a brief description then can choose different options for more detailed information.

The highlight of the museum was seeing the famous bust of Nefertari. Which, of course, you can’t photograph, but you can just make it out through the doors in the next photograh.

As you can see the building itself is amazing. It’s such a shame we weren’t able to fully enjoy this museum.

We had a little wander though some markets, then Kevin decided he wasn’t in the mood for another museum, so we headed back to the hotel, stopping to get some ice cream. Everyone is mad about ice cream here. I’d love to know if it’s a year round thing so just something that’s done when the weather starts to warm up.

Kevin and I both choose caramel which was delicious. We ate it back in our room, while watching the fish.

I was starting to feel worse so had a nice hot bath. Then we just relaxed the rest of the night, ordering some room service for dinner. A treat for us but we’ve found food prices to be very reasonable over here.

It came on a beautifully set trolley and we ate while watching the fish. Don’t think I’d ever get sick of watching the fish. Some of them are so funny.

I just had tomato soup (hoping it might help me feel better) and Kevin had tandoori chicken.

Kevin found some English speaking TV to watch and I watched a couple episodes of True Blood (while trying not to feel too sorry for myself). Hoping I feel better in the morning, if not I’ll be in search of a chemist.

Tomorrow: Another museum and meeting back up with the school group.