Day 17: Berlin - Fat Tire Bike Tour

On my previous Europe trip, we did the Fat Tire Bike Tour in Paris and loved it; the company was started by some A&M grads and is in Paris, Barcelona, London, and Berlin. So I knew this was something we wanted to do as soon as we got to Berlin to orient ourselves to the city.

The bike tour was great - despite the sporadic drizzling. We had a cheeky little British guide who had fallen in love with the city on a weekend visit and had lived there several years now. She was as interested as I am in the historical aspects and Berlin's sometimes bewildering ways of doing things.

Most sites in Berlin are new construction, considering the city was basically flattened during WW II. But the buildings look old because they generally rebuilt everything to look the way it did before. It's so interesting to look at a building or plaza and learn all about how it came to look the way it does, or in some cases even be in the place it is considering how many monuments and structures Hitler relocated for his planned "perfect city". Whether it was the early imperialists, the Nazis, The Soviets, or the Allies, every site has its own history. There is still considerable controversy surrounding what to do with certain monuments/memorials; our guide would tell us - take a picture of this because it most likely won't be here on your next visit -like the statue of Karl Marx.

We got a great view of the city overall and specifies on certain sites, which gave us an idea of the places we wanted to visit on the following days. We also went to a great beer garden with our group - delicious cream of asparagus soup and French style pizza for me and schnitzel for Chris. (Plus great beer of course.) This picture is in front of the Brandenburg Gate - check out our sweet gloves borrowed from Fat Tire - it was pretty chilly.

That night we made some delicious pan-fried pork chops, steamed asparagus (spargel), and avocados for dinner.