18th August 2018 - Berlin

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Kms today = 0
Kms to date = 8,234

After breakfast we headed for the Charlottenburg Palace and did a tour of the "new wing". The palace used to be called the Lietzenburg Palace after the local village. It was commissioned by Sophie Charlotte wife of Fredrick 1, Elector of Brandenburg.
Charlottenburg Palace
The name was changed to Charlottenburg by Fredrick after his wife died. The palace was severely damaged in WW2 but has been restored to its former glory. Charlotte had a huge collection of procelain most of which was destroyed and/or looted in WW2. It was kept in the "Porcelain Room" which has been restored with replacement porcelain.
The Porcelain Room.
After the tour we caught the bus outside the palace and headed for the Art Gallery precinct near the Tiergarten, Berlin's biggest park. We had lunch with the local wasps and then visited the Gemaldegalerie which had a large collection of renaissance paintings from Dutch and Italian masters.
One of the old masters.
Quite a comprehensive collection but I started to suffer art gallery overload so went out to wait for Colin and Morag. They were there when I exited the gallery so they had obviously had enough too. They wanted to go to the Arts and Crafts museum but I decided I had had enough culture for one day and headed for the bus back to the hotel. I had dinner in a local German restaurant. It consisted of German sausage, sauerkraut, potatoes and beer. Real stodge but it hit the spot. There is a real plague of wasps throughout Europe because of the hot dry weather so the waitress gave me an extra coaster to cover my beer so the wasps didn't drown in it. Colin and Morag went to a concert at the hall beside the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial church. I watched a concert on the TV in our room at the hotel.

Got ready for an early start in the morning as we have to do 700+ kms to Liege in Belgium.

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