CENTRAL
EUROPE 2011
Day
1, September 2- Friday
BERLIN
We
left the house yesterday about 1:45 PM and parked our car at the Crown Plaza
Hotel in Herndon, Va. You can leave your car in a covered garage for $40 a week
which includes a shuttle to and from the airport.
We arrived at the airport about 3:30 got checked in, and through
security. I forgot to take my wallet
out of his pocket and got patted down. When
they say take every out of your pockets they don’t mean just the coins and
other metal objects. We took
the train over to gate B. When
we located our gate, we had almost two hours so we stopped at Hurry’s and had
a drink and something to eat. My
wife had a hamburger and I had fish and chips.
At
6:40 they started boarding our Lufthansa flight.
We were in row 24 in the two seat section next to the windows.
They served drinks several times, snacks and then a dinner.
I had chicken, mash potatoes and carrots, and my wife had a pasta dish.
My wife watched a movie and I read.
I am reading a book called the Invisible Bridge about three brothers from
Budapest at the beginning of WWII. I did get some sleep, but my wife said she
didn’t. We enjoyed the
flight in dawn and the big dipper. About
1:15 AM our time they woke us up for breakfast.
We landed in Munich at 2:00 AM our
time. We had to go through customs,
but not security. We had a two
hour wait for the next flight, so we got a very nice cheese omelet and a piece
of bread. The flight from
Munich to Berlin was only 50 minutes. I
did get a little more sleep.
The
Berlin airport is rather small. There
was a luggage bay right inside the gate but it took a long time for our
suitcases to arrive. We had been
told by the travel agent who got our tickets that we would have to pick up our
luggage in Munich and go through customs.
Before
leaving the airport, we bought two welcome cards that are passes for all public
transportation. We later found that
we should have included “C” in our package which would include
transportation to Potsdam. We took a bus into Alexanderplatz.
It was about six blocks to our hotel.
We wandered around a little and finally took a taxi but he wasn’t sure
where our hotel was. He let us out,
and we asked someone and they pointed across the street.
We
are staying in the Adina Apartment Hotel on an der Spandauer Brucle near
Hackenscher Market. It is a new apartment hotel just completed this Spring.
We
checked in and have a nice apartment
on the 5th floor with a balcony.
We can see the famous TV tower from our balcony.
We have a nice size living room, full kitchen combination and a separated
bedroom. We settle in a
little and then went to a grocery- Kaiser’s - several blocks away for things
for breakfast. We went to the lobby
where they had free wi fi. We
sent emails to the family. We
found that we could keep the same pass word and use the internet and email in
our room. We were so tired
that about 5:00 we decided just to go back to our room and have a bowl of
cereal.
