Berlin; Saturday, 23 December, 2017

I had a bit of lie-in and a late breakfast before checking out of the hotel and heading over towards the East of the city.

Earlier in 2017 Berlin had been host to the Internationale Gartenausstellung, a horticultural exhibition located at the same park that the 1987 exposition had been held at. Given the 87 even was in then East Germany the whole area had been renovated and rebuilt in time for this years exhibition.

The park itself is undergoing further work to convert it fully into a public space, but the bulk of the site is open to look around, including the cable car that links the two corners of the park and the high ground in the centre that includes a viewing tower and café.

I arrived at the park by the Cable car entrance so immediately took the car up to the middle station where I then climbed the viewing tower to take in the views over the city. Unfortunately the murk, and quit high winds meant there was nothing to see and it was pretty cold. As the rest of this area is still undergoing works I had to re-join the cable car to descend down to the ‘Gardens of the World’ stop to then visit the gardens, just making it in time as by now they were stopping people from boarding the cable car due to the high winds.

I spent a couple of hours wandering round the gardens, including the impressive maze and the very pretty Chinese and Water gardens. By then the wind had died down a bit so I was able to walk back to the cable car stop and take it back up over the high point and down to the U-Bahn station to catch the train back into town.

I stopped off in the Ostbahnhof to grab a spot of very late lunch and then caught the train round a couple of stops to Alexanderplatz to have a final look round the Christmas markets before it was time to head back to the hotel, pick up my bags and head for the airport.