Day number 2 started pretty nervous, if I’m completely honest. The night that we spent at the Hotel Venice Resort was a short one, no matter how hard I tried to get some sleep, it just wasn’t happening. The couch that was made into a bed was comfortable enough, I could only use a little bigger of a pillow. I’m used to having a big pillow at home, so this was really uncomfortable for me, but I made it through the night anyway. 🙂 I couldn’t blame the staff or the hotel for that or hearing loud guests from the room next to ours, but it surely didn’t help with getting some more sleep early in the morning, or at night, whatever you might say for 3am.
Our original plan was to get up at 4 o’clock, get some breakfast and then take the shuttle bus to Marco Polo Airport. Since all of us were already awake an hour before that, we decided we were going to walk to the airport, and not spend that extra money on the shuttle bus, since we were all already awake and we could get ready sooner than expected. Once again, I have to mention all the helpfulness of the employees at the hotel! Everything was up to my standards, which I could say are pretty high.
The walk to the airport was quite lovely actually, even though I was a bit nervous about waiting in line for a long time, but in the end that was not the case at all. I did have to wait a few minutes to drop my bag off, but after that we breezed through security screening and made it to the air side of the airport with around 2 hours to spare. After a short walk around the terminal, I decided to use the option I have with one of my credit cards and get into the Marco Polo VIP lounge, to see if it’s really worth it or not. Honestly, it’s not, at least not for me. It is true that you get a bit closer to the planes waiting on the tarmac, and there are some luxuries on offer, but when you consider the placement of the lounge, in relation to the departure gates, it doesn’t really help that much. I know that’s not the main objective of those kind of lounges but still. Unfortunately, I decided to get there just a tad too late, so I couldn’t try any of the complimentary food or drinks offered to the guests, but I did take a few great shots while I was sitting down there. 🙂 Because of that, the lounge did make up a little bit for everything else, so when I left it, I did feel quite good! 🙂
There’s not much I could say about the flight itself, except that I managed to get a few minutes of sleep, which is pretty unusual for me. 😀 Not sleeping all that well the night before can do that to you, I’m sure everyone understands that. And THAT’s where the main “event” started to unfold. 😀 We arrived to Berlin Tegel airport a little before 9am, leaving us with plenty of time to look around the city today, as well.
Since we/I found out that my aunt is in Berlin this week too, of course we had to meet up, after such a long time of not seeing each other. It’s weird that we all have to travel to a far away city to be able to see each other, even though it was completely unintetional, looks like we all had a bit of luck! 😀 Today we only spent like half an hour together, because we had different plans, but we’ll see what tomorrow brings.
One of the first things we went to see here in Berlin was the main railway station (Berlin Hauptbahnhof). Even just looking at the pictures of it before arriving, they left me speechless by how big it looks, but when I saw it in person, I was even more mesmerized. The station is HUGE! Spanning over 5 floors, I’ve never imagined seeing something that big. There’s a lot of restaurants, coffee shops and some other small shops, which means that there’s something for each and every person that comes through the station.
After that we left for Alexander Platz, which is one of the biggest and most famous squares in the city. I will tell you more about it in the following days, because today we only sat down there for a few drinks and we moved on. Besides writing more about Alexander Platz, I will dedicate one special post just to getting around Berlin with public transport and all that, but that might come when I get back home and get some much needed rest. 😀
I was getting pretty tired even before we checked in to our hotel/motel, Motel Plus, but the day was nowhere near being over, not by a long shot. By the end of the day, we managed to cross off two of my wishes off the list, which were seeing Templehof airport and Olympia Stadium. Since both of those locations are located a bit further from the city centre, we combined those two and went to see them today, no matter how tired we were.
Just being at Templehof airport and thinking about the history behind that place is pretty amazing. Being able to actually stand on a runway that the planes used to take off and land on, was even more amazing!
As you can see on the cover photo of this post, we only got to see the Olympia Stadium from outside. I wanted to circle around it to maybe find a spot to get closer, but it also started to rain so we rather headed back to a train and went to a restaurant to get some dinner. The dinner was A-MA-ZING!! My dad found a Croatian place called Restaurant Marjan Grill, and I’ll say it again: if you find yourself in Berlin and don’t know what to eat, go to Marjan Grill! The portions are a bit on the larger side, which also reflects the price, but you really won’t be sorry, because it’s really amazingly good!
The last order of the day was to fullfil one of my dad’s wishes. As I’ve mentioned before, he spent some time here 31 years ago, so he wanted to see the neighbourhood where they were staying at the time, how it all changed and if there are still any things left the same as they were back then.
It was a reeeeaaaally long day today, starting at 3am for me, and now being just after 9pm, it’s hard to think of some more creative ways to write this post, but I did my best, so I hope you’ll enjoy reading about our adventures of today, and stay tuned for more posts coming up! 🙂
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