Berlin; Wednesday, 20 December, 2017

I’d worked from home in the morning, and after clearing the last email I quickly packed my bag and headed to the airport.

I had a smooth journey through Heathrow and despite lengthy delays to many other flights ours was only a few minutes late starting boarding. The fog that had been plaguing London for the previous couple of days was still around so there was a lengthy taxi and quite a wait to take off, which despite the best efforts of the captain to get us to Berlin fast still meant we were 20 minutes late landing.

Having picked up my luggage I headed out of Tegel Airport and picked up the TXL bus in towards the city centre. I had originally intended on getting off at the Hauptbahnhof and grabbing a quick bit to eat, but it turned out that the bus stopped one tram stop back from the hotel, and as there was a tram behind us as we pulled into the Hauptbahnhof I stayed onto the shared stop and quickly swapped to the tram.

After checking in and dropping off my stuff I headed back out and picked up the tram back to the Hauptbahnhof to have a snack dinner of a Bratwurst before picking up the U-Bahn over to the Brandenburg Gate.

The whole area was looking very festive with a massive tree, and a busking saxophone player belting out Christmas tunes.

I had a long wander round the area before walking further down Unter den Linden to the Berliner Dom to take some photos round there, before finishing off by walking on down towards Alexanderplatz.

The area around the Neptune fountain at the base of the TV tower is home to one of the largest of the city’s Christmas markets so I had a long wander round that, before it reached closing time and we were all ushered out of the site and over towards the railway station.

As I arrived at the train station a tram heading back to the hotel was just arriving so I took that as a hint and headed back to the hotel and my bed.