A slightly belated travel blog entry from Easter 2018 . . . . and with Easter 2019 coming up it seems about time I got this one done!

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Our trip to Berlin actually started in Dusseldorf as that was a reasonable place to get a flight to on the Thursday evening before Easter - plus it enabled us to travel across northern Germany by ICE train which is always a nice thing to do.

Our flight from Birmingham, with Flybe (BE7049), was scheduled to leave the UK at 19.30 and have us in Dusseldorf at 22.00. Our transit through Birmingham Airport was a horrendous experience - taking well over an hour to get through security - whereas in Germany we were off the plane, though passport control, customs, on a train to the city centre and checking into the IBIS hotel at Dusseldorf Hauptbahnhof all in around 30 minutes.

Meeting us in Dusseldorf were our fellow 'European Escapaders' (Chris & Gail, Simon & Linda) who had flown out to Germany earlier on the Thursday - because they could. Work really does get in the way of holidays!

On the Friday morning we boarded the Deutsche Bahn ICE operated service at 09.49 to make the journey to Berlin Hauptbahnhof where we were due to arrive just after 14.00. Travelling in first class on an ICE is a very pleasant experience and seems much more relaxed than travelling in the UK. Arriving in Berlin we checked into the InterCity Hotel which was just a short walk from the main railway station. This modern and clean hotel also provides guests with a free public transport ticket (for all trams, metro lines, trains and buses) that is valid all around the entire Berlin area during your stay. This is a great bonus and very useful too.

Our first afternoon of sightseeing took in the Tiergarten, Jewish Holocaust Memorial, Brandenberg Gate, Unter den Linden (to name just a few of the sights) before calling in at Georgbrau for some Germanic cuisine washed down with their home brew beer.

Saturday morning had us calling in firstly at the DDR Museum, outlining the history of East Germany and explaining what life was like during the former communist era before the fall of the Berlin Wall. This was followed by a visit to Berlin Cathedral (Berliner Dom) which was impressive and also afforded great views from the top of the dome. It was then time to take advantage of the free transport ticket and we headed out of the centre by tram and chose a random stop to get off at where we thought that a lunch opportunity would be available. The Linden Grillhaus was a lucky find and served up some pretty good food at great prices - I think most people were surprised by the quality of place. The Germans do a great kebab apparently.

Sunday was a day out of the city as we headed to Potsdam (all included in the travel ticket) to visit the palaces and gardens that lie around 30 minutes from the centre of Berlin by train. Our first stop, reached by another bus, was Sanssoucci, and was the summer palace of Frederick the Great built between 1745 and 1747. The palace's name (a French phrase 'sans souci' meaning 'without concerns/worries') describes that this palace was more about relaxing and entertaining.

Our second stop was Cecilienhof, and for those with an interest in World War II history it was here that the leaders of the UK (Churchill), USA (Truman) and Russia (Stalin) met after the war to discuss how to partition Germany. The Potsdam Conference took place during the summer of 1945 at this palace that was built between 1914-1917 for Crown Prince William and his wife Cecilie von Mecklenburg-Schwerin in the English Tudor style.

After a a refrshemnt stop at the nearby Meierei Brewery there was enough time to visit the Marble Palace, where we joined the last tour of the day, before catching the bus back to Potsdam station in order to travel back to central Berlin. For our final evening in Berlin we had made a reservation at Asador Steakhouse to experience something other than German cuisine.

With our flight back to Birmingham scheduled to leave Berlin's Tegel airport at 20.15 on the Monday evening this meant that we had most of the day available to do some further exploration of Berlin. The rest of the group decided that they wanted to see Berlin by boat and went of a river tour in the morning and I decided that I fancied a trip out by metro and tram instead.

The weather was absolutley gorgeous on the Monday and having wandered around the Alexanderplatz area Chris decided that he wanted to go and see a huge block of concrete (apparently this was impressive) and the rest of us fancied taking in a little more history by visiting the Tranenpalast, an old border crossing point (between East and West Berlin), that now houses an exhibition about daily life in a divided city. This explains the stories of people who were able to travel to 'the West' through this building located adjacent to Friedrichstrasse railway station and was an interesting, and free, exhibition/museum.

Before heading to the airport there was time for some final Germanic food and beer and a quick trip to see the Kaiser Wilheim Cathedral, close to Berlin Zoo railway station, which stands as a memorial to the bombing of the city in World War II.

And that was Berlin, or at least a few parts of the city that we visited over the Easter break, so there was just the matter of collecting our bags from the hotel and heading out by bus to Tegel Airport for our Flybe flight (BE1858) back to Birmingham.