Friday 16 August – Edinburgh to Berlin

Friday started with some toast and tea/coffee served by Carwol 🙂

We made sure the rest of our bags were packed and ready to go and waited for the taxi. Given the traffic of previous days we weren’t sure how much, if any, delays we might encounter. Arrival at the airport was around 7:30am.

Bag drop off at Easyjet was extremely easy. Put your bag on the scale, print out bag tag and take it to the bag drop area. The guy checked our passport, boarding pass and bag tag and then sent the bags on their merry way.

Signs for security screening said a five minute wait, not too bad. After going through the area where we scanned our boarding pass, I saw a sign for fast track – that we had included in our ticket. I asked the guy – we were in the wrong line. He ushered us through a number of people and took us to the correct line. We went through security and I had my bag checked yet again (pretty sure it’s all the batteries for the drone and the portable power pack for the phone). All clear and on our way!

We stopped at a coffee shop to spend our two hours waiting. Like at Dublin, they only tell you an hour before the flight which gate you are at. We were sitting near gate 6. We would be leaving from gate 24.

Ros and I had spoken previously about trying to get a massage somewhere. We thought our hotel in Berlin might be the best bet. I had emailed the hotel the previous day but not heard back. They finally emailed back today and we were now looking at options. Fingers crossed they can fit us in this afternoon.

I was writing a few of the blogs and by this time it was 9am. I checked my phone and on the boarding pass it said "gate closes" at 9:15. Oh crap, did that mean we needed to be boarding by then? We really didn’t want to be one of ‘those’ people on the show who show up late for the plane and are denied boarding. The sign said it would be a 9 minute walk to the gate. We did it in about 5 minutes. It turned out things were a little bit delayed and we ended up waiting about 15 minutes at the gate to board. We had speedy boarding so joined that line, in second spot. Well, that was until they said the message about speedy boarding and this older couple decided that they were entitled to skip that line as well and go before everybody else. Some people are just plain rude, but not worth saying anything – we would eventually all be going to the same spot!

Boarding was easy. Ros and I had seats 1A and 1B. After everybody had boarded, seat 1C next to me was empty. We had the bulkhead row so a bit more room than other seats.

The flight was good – on time and no issues getting off the plane (and onto the bus to the terminal) either. We found the area to go through for customs. Ros and I went up together, but we had picked the slow line somehow. As we turned away to leave, my bag clipped the door behind me and it started to shut. The person behind me was holding it open so all good. The customs dude was not impressed and simply shook his head at me as I walked away. Whoops!

Bags took quite a while to come out, then on our way! We walked through the ‘nothing to declare’ section. The immigration guy there looked me up and down, and my bags, as we walked past. I tried to not make eye contact and kept up pace and walked through. Ros was having a good laugh afterwards because you could see the guy didn’t seem to agree with my suggestion, but did nothing! Pretty sure I had all the food in my case….

Outside we went to the taxi rank. It’s funny seeing all the Mercedes-Benz cars used as taxis here. There were a few Toyota’s sprinkled in for good measure. The taxi ride to the hotel, near Checkpoint Charlie, was about 30 minutes and we got to see a few things along the way.

Upon arriving at the hotel we were able to check in easily enough. We had booked a massage, but they didn’t have availability for two people at once so they had organised it for around the corner at a Thai place.

Well, the massage was something new. I literally had somebody walk on my back, as did Ros. Imagine a cat on all fours hunched up clawing at your back, well, that’s what it felt (and looked) like. The massage was nowhere near relaxing. I’m sure there will be bruises tomorrow!

Ros was in search of a new top so we ventured into Gallery Lafayette to check out what they had. We wandered around for a while, had some croissants (not that good) and a drink. There were no suitable shops found for tops so we went for a walk to the Berlin Wall remains that were nearby. It was only a few hundred metres from the hotel and it was quite a sight to see. It’s hard to imagine a wall like that up around the city and what it would have been like at the time.

On the way back to the hotel we stopped through Checkpoint Charlie. It’s a very American thing there with people taking photos with the ‘guards’ there. Still, we had to have a look and see what it was like. We then went back to the hotel to have a bit of a rest before venturing out later for dinner.

I needed to find a travel adapter given I had left mine at home. In the nearby shopping centre (Mall of Berlin) we found a store like Harvey Norman. We found what we needed then headed to the food area. We ate where it looked like the locals were, and where it was busy. The food had big portions and was very tasty.

In the Mall of Berlin, they had a dancing lounge on the ground floor. They had this big dance floor and played music with random people dancing (slow dancing type). We initially thought it was a competition, but it appeared that anybody could join in. Us and our 4 left feet decided not to 🙂

We got back to the hotel around 8:30pm and crashed out, ready for a full day tomorrow in Berlin.