Julien returned from a home visit to his native Switzerland.
I did not sleep one wink the entire night
With all the extra Awake Time, I finished reading The Bridges of Madison County. Nice book. I did not cry.
After performing our morning rituals and with Doug in tow, we transferred our luggage to the Park Inn Hotel in Alexanderplatz. Our room was ready, so we checked in, dumped our stuff, and went to chat up the Grand Circle representative, Kati.
Then we three caballeros rode the S-Bahn to the Spree River boat tour dock and embarked on a leisurely one-hour boat cruise of central Berlin…complete with biers!
With a promise to meet again later in the evening, we split with Doug, returning to the hotel for brief nap before our 18:30 group cocktail/meet-n-greet.
We road out to Schöneberg to meet Doug & Julien for dinner at an Indian restaurant: Mali. Stupidly, I wore naught but a polo shirt over a t-shirt. Shortly after arriving at Doug & Julien’s, the weather turned quite cold and very wet. And there I was, shivering and damp, with neither a hoodie nor an umbrella for comfort. Fortunately, Julien kindly lent me his jacket during dinner…and the rain lightened up enough for us to return to the hotel without getting soaked to the bone.
Wide awake–could there possibly have been too many naps?–Rob & I went down to Spago’s, the hotel sports bar, to watch the Germany-Algeria World Cup match [Germany won, 2-1] and enjoy a bier. As the crowd thinned post-game, we returned to our room for some needed shut-eye. Tomorrow begins our Grand Circle adventure in earnest.
A Taste of the Soviet Bloc 