Charlottenburg Palace Gardens and a Cruise on the Spree

We slept in a little on Sunday, August 2^nd, then went to brunch with Marika, her brother, sister-in-law, nieces and friends Gisela and Ulla on the terrace in front of a café on Stuttgarter Platz.  It was another perfect day, like the day before, and it was very pleasant to sit in the sunshine with good company and good food.

Afterwards, we said goodbye to the others, and now we had Marika to ourselves for the next two days.  Her suggestion was to visit the gardens at the Charlottenburg Palace, near which we could board a cruise boat for a trip on the River Spree through the center of Berlin.

We didn’t actually enter the large baroque palace, built in the 17^th and 18^th centuries, but we visited the gift shop and then went around to the very extensive gardens in back. 

After some time there, we hurried a few blocks, to the banks of the Spree, where we boarded a cruise boat to go up the river.  A man near the bow with a microphone narrated what we were seeing on either side, first in German, then in English, without notes. 

As the Spree is the river on whose banks Berlin was born, this itinerary took us into the very heart of the city.  We passed the Belvedere palace, home of the President; then the offices of the Chancellor, Angela Merkel; then modern buildings holding offices for the Bundestag, the German parliament; then the Reichstag Building,

burned in 1933, but restored, with a modernistic glass dome, since German reunification (we had had a tour there in 2011); then past the Museum Island, with the Pergamon Museum and the German Cathedral (we had visited them in 2000); then the Nikolai Quarter, which we had wandered in 2011), with the Television Tower’s tall, bulbous East German pride behind and above it. 

The ride ended at the Jannowitz Bridge, next to which we sat while we planned our next move.

We decided to have dinner at a restaurant that we’d passed on the tour, the Restaurant-Boat Patio.  This was a barge, floating in the river near the Bellevue Palace, that had been turned into a restaurant. 

We took the S-Bahn to the Bellevue stop and crossed the river.  I don’t remember exactly what we are, but I remember that it wasn’t bad, yet the portions were small, considering the price.

By then it was getting dark.  We went back to Marika’s neighborhood and checked to see if the Radio Tower was open, but it appeared to be under repair. 

And so, to bed.