Europe Trip Recap: Berlin, Germany, Day One

I've been meaning to keep up with my posts about Europe, but this summer seems to be flying by and here I am, two months after our trip, still blogging about day one! Good thing my mom and I journaled every night and I have detailed notes on what we did each day.

On May 17th, we landed in Berlin, Germany at the Tegel airport. We were exhausted, but still managed to find our hotel, Adina Apartment Hotel Hauptbahnhof on Invalidenstrasse. It took about 10 minutes to walk there, heading East away from the Hauptbahnhof (main train station).

We landed in Berlin at 7 a.m., so by the time we got to the hotel, it was about 9 a.m. and we couldn't check in yet. We handed our bags to the hotel staff and went to explore what we could around the hotel without getting lost! Since this was my third time in Berlin, I quickly figured out where we were and knew my way around the city at that point. I am pretty good with directions, which helped us out a lot on the trip.

We walked down Friedrichstrasse and Unter den Linden and ended up near the Brandenburg Gate, but I didn't want to take my mom there until that evening. Instead, we explored touristy shops and ended up playing with the lovely cosmetics in Nivea. Mom made her first German purchase at Nivea too. I was already admiring the shoe stores and contemplating buying Birkenstocks.

The picture taking began! I made mom pose by this bear.

When we returned back to the hotel, we found that we could check in a little earlier than we anticipated (always a huge relief) and that our bags had already been brought upstairs to our room. Wow, we felt so pampered--I thought we'd be lugging them up there ourselves.

We walked in to find a lovely and spacious room. I suspected it would be our most spacious of the trip and it was. We had a studio room, so it featured a kitchen, but no laundry. The full apartment rooms had washers and dryers. It was really nice to have a small refrigerator to be able to store groceries in!

After settling in, we rested for two hours. I felt very nauseous and I knew my body just wanted to sleep. It was only the start of my nauseousness from jet leg, which I had never experienced before.

We dragged ourselves out of bed to take showers and got ready to head out for dinner before going to the Reichstag for our scheduled tour time (I booked it in advance online).

We stopped by the train station for dinner and got wraps. I also was able to finally contact Craig and my dad. I spoke to Craig via the Skype app and it didn't even feel like we were thousands of miles apart. He was so worried about me, but should have known that sometimes it takes a while to find wi-fi in Europe. Unfortunately, our hotel was fabulous, but didn't include free wi-fi in the room.

The train station had a Ritter Sport chocolate tower!

After dinner, we walked by the Brandenburg Gate. That's the Adlon hotel with the mint colored roof--otherwise known as where Michael Jackson hung a baby out the window for the paparazzi to see. 

The lovely gate!

Here I am with the Reichstag in the background.

This was my third time in the Reichstag and I still learned a few things on the audio tour. 

On our walk back to the hotel, we passed this outdoor beer garden and it looked really cool! I was happy to hear Daft Punk's "Get Lucky" blaring. It's a song that we listened to before I left for Europe, so it reminded me of Craig and home. I tried not to think about how much I missed Craig already and focus on the fun I would have with my mom for the next two weeks.

We walked so much our first day in Germany, so I ended the day with the item my mom purchased at Nivea--foot cream!

I think we walked over 12 miles that first day and would continue to walk so many steps every day.