First full day in Berlin, May 3, 2022

     We both had a great night's sleep and feel less jet lagged than ever. We think it is because we did get chunks of sleep and because of the napping pods. 

     We did our first wash, always an adventure when you can't read the directions. Thank Heavens for Google Translate! 

    We took a morning walk up Friederichstrasse and were able to extricate Euros from the ATM, something that we had not been able to do at the airport ATM. So, that was a huge relief. We went into the underground to read about the multi-day tickets. We walked to Gendarmenmarkt Square, called Berlin's finest square. There are two churches - The German Cathedral and the French Cathedral. And the Concert Hall (Konzerthaus) is also there. From there, we found a Lidl supermarket with a much wider selection of food and got more food for the apartment. Then, we went home and ate a baguette, cheese, ham and tomatoes.

    After lunch and some reading, we walked up Friederichstrasse to Unter den Linden (Under the Linden Trees) which we walked along. It includes a futuristic VW showroom which we dropped into briefly. We strolled along the middle of the boulevarde where there are coffeeshops, little kiosks and many nice benches to sit on.  We walked to the iconic Brandenburg Gate which sat neglected for over 25 years when it was stranded in the no-man's land between East and West Berlin. We saw the American embassy as well as a empty huge building for Aeroflot. The area around it was off limits. (The Russians invaded Ukraine two months ago.)

    From there, we strolled back to our neighborhood where we ate at a nice Vietnamese restaurant - Hua Long. Mark had a

Our apartment on Schultzenstrasse

duck and mango dish and Barbara had a yellow curry chicken dish.