Berlin – May 2nd to 7th 2019
The Art and History of Berlin.

Thirty nine members flew from Luton to Berlin, Schönefeld and stayed in the excellent centrally located four-star Hotel Berlin, Berlin with plenty of good restaurants within walking distance.

Our Taylor Travel guide Heiki, an East Berliner, was knowledgeable, hard-working charming and gave us an intriguing insight of her own  family who were divided when the wall was closed in 1961.

A city which seems to be finding itself socially, culturally and economically through its architecture and organisation after going to hell and back and then, with the fall of the wall in 1989, the unification of East and West.

We visited Charlottenburg Palace, East Side Gallery- 1km of the memorial for freedom wall with 106 paintings, the Sanssouci and Cecilienhof Palaces – the venue of the end of war Potsdam Conference of 1945.

While on Museum Island visiting the Pergoman and Neues museums we took a boat trip on the river Spree. The Reinstag with “Kaffee und Kuchen” and its huge glass dome designed by Sir Norman Foster was a hugh success as was our final stop at the Germaldegalerie which boasts all major artists from C13 to C18.

We also managed to slip in a trip to the opera.  We saw Tosca at the Staatsoper Unter den Linden.

Thirty nine members came back – another minor miracle!