Busy busy Berlin bees

After a fair unproductive day on Thursday we needed to get our bums into gear and make the most of Friday, cramming in as much as we could. Our first stop was breakfast at the restaurant Chipps on Jagerstrasse, we needed some fuel to get us going. For me it was tomato, avocado, feta and chilli toast – pretty much my ideal way to start the day. Washed down with some yerba mate tea and an apple, carrot, orange and ginger juice.

Whilst mum went for eggs and bacon with a tomato, cucumber, olive and feta salad.

Feeling much more energised we headed over to the haunting Holocaust memorial

It doesn’t immediately hit you but the more time you spend wandering between the giant blocks, the more oppressive and powerful it becomes. A truly amazing monument to those who lost their lives.

After spending about half an hour or so at the memorial we decided to head over to one of Berlin’s most famous landmarks, the Brandenburg Gate which is amazingly impressive, even in the rain.

Before a quick peek at the Reichstag

And then on to the Hamburger Banhof museum for a little art, I love these trees by Katherine Grosse

After a pretty hectic morning we headed over to the wonderful Pauly Saal for some lunch. We had one of the best meals I’ve had in a long time and it’s somewhere I can’t recommend highly enough if you’re in Berlin. It’s in a huge old building which formerly housed a Jewish girls school and is now a collection of restaurants and art galleries. We had Viennese fried chicken with a chive sauce accompanied by potato and cucumber salads. Totally and utterly heavenly (and the waiters aren’t bad either ladies!)

Happy and full we headed upstairs to the galleries above and spent an hour or so exploring. There’s a great exhibition that charts the lives of the Kennedy family in photos on one floor as well as a fantastic exhibition by Martin Schoeller and Christian Tagliavini. You can’t take any photos but I’ll pop the links at the bottom so you can have a look if you so desire.

Next up was a trip to the Berlinische museum of art before visiting the fascinating Jewish museum, where they have this beautiful wish tree. You can write down your wish on a paper pomegranate and then place it in the tree. You can climb right up inside it which obviously I had to do.After running around like loons all day we decided it was time to head back to the hotel to change before jumping in a cab to dinner. We’d heard good things about Schneeweiss (the German for Snow White) so hot-footed it over there. You immediately understand the name, everything inside is a cool white and the chandelier looks like it could have been carved from ice.

I went for the celeriac and apple soup with crispy pork crackling nibbles whilst mum opted for a simple salad, although it was fairly impressive. soup

Followed by spatzle for me (again, oops) and deconstructed goulash for mum – which was so yummy. The spatzle was good but didn’t quite match the one I’d had at the market. Apologies for the photo quality, the lighting was pretty bad and I only had my phone with me.

We had a crack of dawn flight the next day so we headed back to the hotel for an early night after dinner, our berlin adventure over, or so we thought…..