Halbe; Thursday, 12 December, 2024

I’d stayed overnight in a hotel in Stratford, in part because the hotel prices around London City Airport were astronomical, and partly because it is a convenient location with the DLR from across the road from the hotel taking less than 20 minutes to reach the terminal at LCY.

With my flight leaving at 08:25 I finally left the hotel just before 7 and caught the train a short while later, still arriving at London City with over an hour before my flight departed, and even with it being the morning rush I was through security and into the departures lounge within about 15 minutes of getting off of the train. I arrived in the lounge just as the gate number appeared – the furthest one from the lounge, of course.

The flight was late leaving, partly due to an air traffic control restriction, and once that had lifted the plane arriving just before us managed to hit a bird on landing, so the runway had to be closed and checked and the backlog of landing planes cleared before we were allowed to taxi out and take off.

It was a smooth flight over to Berlin and a very quick journey through the airport – through immigration and down onto the train without stopping. The train left a couple of minutes later and headed round onto the Berlin Ring where I changed onto the U-Bahn a couple of stops to my hotel.

It was only just gone midday, but thankfully the hotel was quiet and my room was already available, so I was able to checkin and drop off my stuff before heading back out into the city.

I headed over to Alexanderplatz, as that was the easiest point in the city centre reached by the U-Bahn from near the hotel and then had a wander over to the Nikolaiviertel, an area of the city that I haven’t previously explored, a small network of restored medieval merchants houses arranged around the local church. It’s also, in early December, home to a small Christmas Market.

From the Nikolaiviertel I headed back towards the main route through this part of town the Unter den Linden, stopping off by the Humboldt Forum to take in the rebuilt Palace and then hopping on the U-Bahn to go a couple of stops north to the Brandenburg Gate to have a look round there.

I then had an annoying 20 minute hunt for a cash machine that didn’t want to charge me €5 to take out some money, eventually having to walk most of the way to Potsdamer Platz before being able to actually find a bank to get a free cash withdrawal.

Berlin, like the rest of Germany, has hung on to cash much more than many other countries, which meant to do anything in the Christmas Markets you have to have cash on you, especially if you’re after a Glühwein and a Currywurst.

I spent quite a bit of time exploring several of the city’s Christmas markets, and possibly having rather too much sausage, before I headed back to the hotel and a well deserved early night.