We awoke to a grey and drizzly day and decided to take the hop on/hop off bus tour rather than slog through the rain. For two hours we toured most of the important sights while being entertained by our bilingual guide. His commentary was apparently as funny in German as it was in English. We stopped at the Topography of Terror where we recapped 20th century German history. There was also a good length of the Berlin Wall.
Hopping back on the bus we headed for probably the most blatant example of tourist attractions we've seen, Check Point Charlie. This isn't even the real Check Point Charlie as the original was dismantled after the fall of the wall. You can get your photograph taken wearing a Russian military hat while posing with two phony American GIs.
As we had an important event this evening we headed back to our hotel and changed. After a bit of drama finding a taxi we sped, and I do mean sped, off to the Berlin Philharmonic. For Kelly this was the highlight of the trip. She had purchased the tickets the moment they went on sale in May. The Berlin Philharmonic is the best of its kind in the world and plays in a modern, specially designed concert hall. The phrase "not a bad seat in the house" may be a bit of a cliche, but in this case it is true. We were entertained with works by Strauss, Shumann and Dvorcak. Unlike Kelly I am not that knowledgeable when it comes to classical music but I do know music extremely well layer when I hear it and this was amazing.
I totally agree with you about Check Point Charlie, but you do HAVE to see it (or in my case I got lost and kept accidently coming back to it by mistake, much to Kate's chagrin).
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