Today we slept in (Hurrah!). We had planned to see the DDR museum in the early afternoon and the German History Museum in the evening - the tour guide yesterday said that it and all other state museums were free on Thursday from 6-10pm. We arrived at the DDR museum with a large crowd of others, so we decided to get ice cream instead because the museum was really crowded. After we finished our ice cream, we took a bus around the city with the intention of taking the self-guide Rick Steves bus tour. However, when the bus got to the Reichstag we saw that the line wasn't very long (probably because it was SO hot today) so at the last minute we jumped off the bus to visit the Reichstag. It was very hot, but we only had to wait 30 minutes (usually the wait is 1+hrs). We got a great view of the city and learned some more history.

Afterwards, we had some time to kill before the museums were open for free, so we went to another local restaurant (recommended by Rick Steves) which was pretty good (but also more expensive). Ivan ordered the schnitzel; Susan tried the jager sausage (with spagghetti); and Claire had another type of sausage. All of the food was very tasty and very German.

At 6pm, we went to the German History Museum only to find - to our dismay - that it closed at 6pm and wasn't participating in the free museum activities. We had all been looking forward to that museum the most and were disappointed that we missed out in our attempt to save a few Euros. Instead, we went to the new museum where the Egyptian display is and saw Nephratitit's head (among other things). We stopped at a coffee shop on our way home (and a Birkenstock store - though we didn't find anything we liked) and then went back to the hotel to pack most of our stuff and prepare for the next leg of our journey which begins tomorrow.

Labels: Berlin, Europe 2008, Germany