Our Berlin Tour with Rachel and Max - Max tour guide. Day 2

My absolute favourite thing to do in Berlin is to cycle through the streets with all the other Berliners, soaking up the sights with a fresh breeze in your face when everything else is stifling hot.  This is what we did today as Max took us on a cycling tour to the Prussian Park in Willmersdorf, South West Berlin.

Rachel and Max parking the bikes outside the Park with all the Thai food. You can see that we hired electric bikes.  Just as well as we ended up doing 29km!

Cycling in Berlin is just so easy.  There are cycle lanes everywhere, even on the major roads and you have masses of space allocated in the wide lanes so you don't feel vulnerable.  Everything is geared up to make cycling easy and it is great fun!

Cycle lanes

So as I say, Max was our tour guide for the day and we felt lucky to have a native Berliner to take us on a personal tour.  We started off on Mauerpark and although the market was on we didn't go in - just too hot, and we wanted to get started on our Berlin Wall tour.  A part of the wall has been preserved here and you can walk along and see the remnants and look at photos and films about the history of the wall and the people who lived there.  It was fascinating.

This took us into Mitte and we then circled around towards the Teirgarten.

Part of Berlin Wall

Chapel of Reconciliation.  This bent cross was on top of a church spire.  The church  (Gothic Revival 1894) was destroyed in 1985!!.  Cross left where it fell.

Part of the wall has been preserved here.  Consisting of two walls with a patrol and watchtower area in between

I had never been to the Western park of Berlin and it was quite a revelation.  The Teirgarten and Zoo for instance.  (although we didn't go to the Zoo)  But that park is simply beautiful!  On such a hot day it was a lovely green haven, everything well kept, interesting and massive bronze statues and lots of cycle and walkways through it.  Little bridges over the river and so many sights of interest to see.  I'm just sorry that I was so busy looking and I didn't want to keep stopping everyone to take a photo!

Cycling through Motzstrasse in Schonenberg South west we saw lots of Gay bars and shops, everything was very 'Village People' but quite upmarket and glitzy.

We saw everything from upmarket hotels and suburbs, to streetwalkers, to the Reichtag and parliament buildings and river walks, beggars and super rich or at least their cars! and everything in between.

There is such a good vibe in Berlin and at street level you feel that you are part of it.

Our destination was the Prussian Park  http://thaipark.de/ Asian families get together and cook the most amazing food on little stoves in the park.  Whole families are involved in the preparation and everything is just a few euros.  We had deep fried prawns in chilli sauce, dumplings, pad thai, banana fritters mango and line salad and coconut and papaya smoothies. We sat on the grass but hurried with everyone else to shelter under the trees when a heavy storm briefly passed over.

Overall a fantastic day.  We hired electric bikes and boy are we glad we did.  We could not have kept up comfortbly with Rachel and Max on their bikes and we did a 29km round trip so it was quite a journey.  We are now back tired but very happy and lucky to have had such a wonderful two days.