This weekend my love and I went on a weekend 'en amoureux' to Berlin. There is too much to see and to discover for 1 weekend, but we tried to fit a little bit of everything into 48h. Although we missed our little girl, it felt good to be on the town with my man, holding hands, refinding our own pace and enjoying each other's company. Luckily we also had the sun on our side for the full 2 days of our stay.
We stayed at the I31, a boutique hotel in Mitte. I particularly liked the design of their lobby, the good beds and the central location, close to everything.
After dropping our bags at the hotel, we made our way to Burgermeister, because I read so many good things about their burgers. It is an old shabby public toilet under the tramway bridge turned into the place to be for burgers. There was a huge queue, but the Meister aller klassen (double burger, cheese, bacon, bbq sauce & jalapenos) with chilly cheese fries were well worth the wait.
After this huge lunch, we walked off the calories along the old Berlin wall, breathing in the history of the city next to the Spree river.
We visited most of the highlights, such as the Brandenburger Tor, The Memorial monument to the Murdered Jews of Europe, Checkpoint Charlie, The TV Tower and the Bundestag. We did not visit any museums as the weather was too good to stay inside.
There is street art everywhere, on almost all the walls and doors, graffiti artists had their go. It is part of the city's charm and spirit.
We had a lovely dinner at 'Lokal', a very good spot for low key dinner dating and good modern German food. We had the beef rib, it was delicious, the service was friendly and informal. Good choice.
We had after-dinner drinks at the Neue Odessa, a classy art-deco style cocktail club near Rosenthaler Platz. After a few cocktails we walked home through the streets of Berlin. It didn't seem so cold anymore after all the food and drinks.
After a good night's rest, we started our photomaton tour at the Schonhauser Allee. I'll explain, through out the city there are some old school photo boots and as I wanted to have as many photos of us in a vintage photo booth as possible we did a whole tour of the city, in search of the booths, doing stupid faces, capturing a moment, and adding some romance as well. Memories of our Berlin trip I will hold on to.
We had a big brunch (as in : omelet, pancakes, granola, lattes, vitamine bombs, eggs benedict) in between photo booth searches at Spreegold. we enjoyed our food and some slow time in a buzzing café, watching the people go by.
We had dinner at the fleischerei. A meat restaurant that looks like an old butcher shop gone trendy. Yes again, meat! (This week I'll be having a lot fish I think)
It was nice and very cosy with all the candle lights. After dinner we went for drinks at an other cocktail club -bon bon- that was seductively lit and expensively decorated - a very sexy place with well mixed drinks. A perfect ending to our little getaway in Berlin.
A little thing that surprised us was that you can still smoke in German bars! That was weird, especially as non-smoker Lisa (after years of chain smoking before the baby) cannot bare the smell on her hair and clothes anymore!
Plus Points of Berlin:
* Cool & trendy city with lots of history: a good mix of old and new
* Vintage photobooths: We did 5 of them! Love the photos! (One of them made me look like a 60's husband killer in her mug shot)
* Good food: not only kebab and curry wurst
* Good drinks: slow coffee, lemonades, beer & cocktails
* Good & cheap public transport: 3,5€ to the Airport
* Safe feeling at night: even though everybody walks around with glass bottles of beer
* Nice shops: with too expensive hipster stuff
Minus Points of Berlin
* No logic in house numbers (The time we lost looking for numbers, aha)
* Big big city - my legs will be hurting for another month I think
* Since it is such a big city, difficult to capture the 'real' Berlin as every part of the city has its own identity and you have to see through that.
Thanks my love for another great getaway with you.