Berlin day 2

We had a slow start to the day since we don’t have to be anywhere at a certain time till this afternoon. With our river cruise and the bike tour these past few weeks, we’ve had to stick to a time schedule, so it’s nice to take a break from that.

We walked to an Aldi supermarket to buy orange juice, pastries and cereal bars for breakfast.

We visited the Altes (History) museum in the morning, ate lunch there. While we were eating lunch, a bass clarinetist demonstrated the acoustics of the rotunda.

The Altes museum has a number of Roman mosaics.

We visited the Pergamon museum in the afternoon. The Pergamon museum is closing this Fall for structural stabilization and renovations. It will be closed completely until 2027 when parts of it will reopen. The section that contains the Pergamon altar is already closed, so we don’t get to see that. There is another exhibit, the Pergamon panorama that we’ll see tomorrow.

The Pergamon museum has the Ishtar Gate from Babylon.

Miletus was a greek city in what is now southwest Turkey. The Gate of Miletus was build around 120 AD and was moved to Germany in the early 1900s. We did not visit Miletus on our visit to Turkey.

We walked back on Unter de Linden which is the heart of old Berlin, saw a few Christmas ornaments and beer steins.

We passed by site of the Nazi book burning at Bebelplatz on May 10, 1933, a little over 90 years ago.

We walked by the Berlin Cathedral. We’ll visit inside later once our museum pass has expired.

We ate dinner at a German restaurant near hotel. They only had spargel (asparagus) soup listed on the menu as seasonal soup of the day.