It was promising to be cooler today but the sun came back this morning after the previous warm and cloudy days.

Another trip to the Friseur(hairdresser) was necessary before we went out to lunch at the Telekom Tower and the flight to Reykjavik, Iceland on the next day. While I was walking to the hairdresser I found a sign explaining about the history of Bouchéstraße, the street with Scott’s apartment.

Lunch was booked for 1:30pm so we took our time preparing for the day. It was terrible to see the helicopter accident at SeaWorld in Australia on the BBC news. They also talked about how travellers from any countries outside the Shengeng zone will have to apply for a visa waiver(ETIAS) from November 2023, including Croatia who only just joined the alliance. Lucky for us, we travel with Polish passports when we are in Europe.

Preparing for the cooler weather I chose to wear the 140 denier stockings with my dark blue suede boots (I realised that the stockings will not be enough on their own for the expected temperatures in Iceland) but it was cooler in Berlin today and I could feel the cold wind on my legs. I wore a long sleeved cotton top under my floral dress. I needed a scarf today and the new green coat kept me very warm.

We collected a Citroen car this time and drove back to Alexanderplatz which led us past the Eastside gallery and it’s painted walls and tourists.

The Platz looked different in the daytime and we walked past some awesome Soviet buildings from where we left the car.

The Fernsehturm (Telekom Tower) is a television tower with a revolving restaurant and observation deck at the top.

The tower was constructed between 1965 and 1969 by the government of the German Democratic Republic (East Germany). It was intended to be both a symbol of Communist power and of the city. It remains a landmark today with its height of 368 metres (including the antenna) it is the tallest structure in Germany and the third-tallest structure in the European Union.

It is a popular tourist destination and I would always recommend booking the restaurant to really enjoy the view without having to bustle through crowds of people. There were queues at the bottom but we had a reservation and entered immediately. There is a foyer dedicated to selling souvenirs and you need to go up the steps, through a security scanning station (Scott was worried about my little bag of salt ) and we were ushered through without incident. You are then counted into the elevators of which there was no social distancing. The elevator is quiet and quick. The restaurant is then accessed up another flight of stairs so it is above the observation deck.

There is an a la carte menu available but our booking was for a 3 course set menu with some options which included a glass of champagne each on arrival plus 2 mini carafes each of red or white wine as we ate our meal.

Scott chose the Salad for his entree and I had the Pumpkin soup. For our mains, I chose the fish and Scott had the lamb dish which were all delicious. The service was attentive and the waiter spoke English. All the while we were slowly being beguiled by the extensive views of the city of Berlin. The first rotation took about an hour and we had great visibility but there were some clouds. For the second rotation, the clouds moved away and we had sunshine to enjoy before watching a lovely sunset on the third round. Visibility distance was about 80 kilometres.

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For dessert we chose the cake options, Apple cake for Scott and Black Forest cake was my choice.

We finished with a cocktail each and stayed enthralled by the views until our allocated finish time of 4pm.

We made our way home on the Ubahn train from Alexanderplatz to Hermannplatz and then changed trains to get to Neuköln Rathaus where we could walk home from. On the way we stopped at a small Turkish cafe to buy some food to have for dinner at home. We chose mini meat filled ravioli in a yoghurt sauce and a ratatouille type of vegetable dish. My personal cocktail waiter then created and served some variations of martini’s to complete the night.

Guten. Nacht.