Today has been our longest day away from the hotel in 1 shot. I woke up at 5:30 am and was hot so I flip-flopped my head to the other end of the bed and managed to fall back asleep within an hour and woke up just before 8 am to find Mom just getting out of the shower. We dressed and left the room by 9 am.a
We went back to the same frühstuck restaurant as yesterday. I had a müseli yogurt parfait (yum!) with kirche (cherry) cake and Mom had a parfait container sized portion of, wait for it, couscous. Yes, folks, orange colored couscous. She said wanted something light and not sweet and they had all their lunch options out already so she chose couscous. Whatever floats your boat and makes you happy, Mom. We both had iced lattes.
Today was our Museum Day. We had a time reservation for the Pergamon Museum for 4 pm. We had tickets for any and all museums we wanted to go to today. In addition to the Pergamon, Mom wanted to go to the Altes Nationale Gallerie (Old National Gallery) and the Neues Museum (New Museum) where Nefertiti is, but when we had tried to get reservations for entry times for those we were unsuccessful, so we decided to get there early and stand in line if we had to. The first one we went to, the Altes Museum, let us right in since we already had the day pass. Yay! We spent a good 2 hours there seeing many famous and not at all famous paintings and sculptures. We saw original paintings by Monet, Manet, Renoir, Cezanne, Degas, paintings I’ve seen in books or posters but never in person. We saw the original The Thinker by Rodin But, my favorite of the day was one titled The Blue Grotto in Capri by Carl Friedrich Sieffert. The study of light and shadows was stunning and it has a fantastic depth to the grotto. The blue is mesmerizing. Look it up. See for yourself.
When we were done there we went right to the Neuse Museum to see about getting in. There was a line, so we waited. When we got to the front Mom explained that we had a ticket but no reservation. The man told us that they were full at the moment, that we needed to wait a bit. So we waited maybe 10 mins and then he let us in. Yay! Mom was eager to see Nefertiti as her father was enamored with her. We worked our way through the museum and saw the Golden Hat, a late Bronze Age artifact that is 30 inches tall and is said to have served astrological & calendar functions. We also saw replicas of the bronze doors from the Baptistry at the cathedral in Florence that I’ve seen in person. And we saw Nefertiti! We’re not sure what it is about her that captivated my Papa, but it was great to see such a famous work in person. The bust is only 18 inches tall and is painted limestone.
When we left the Neues Museum we sat down and Mom marveled and glowed that we were able to get into both museums without having reservations. She was very happy! Yay! We then took the U-bahn to the Hauptbahnhof to get a sandwich to share. It was 2:30 by now and we needed to be back at Museum Island for our 4 pm Pergamon Museum reservation. We shared a baguette sandwich with the bare minimum amount of ham, cheese, lettuce and tomato possible to still be called a sandwich. And a bottle of water. We rode the U-Bahnhofstrasse back to Museum Island and after going the wrong way to find the entrance (my bad) I found a small sigh we had missed that showed we had passed it several times.z. We sat on the steps and waited as it was not yet 4 pm. I asked Mom if Rick Steves mentioned in his book about an alternate entrance while the Island is undergoing extensive construction. She looked and lo and behold, he did! He said exactly where it was. So, her bad. :) We called it a wash as we were still early.
We entered and after a small snafu with finding our reservations on my email on her phone, we found it and were admitted. We were offered an audio tour in English for free and were given a smartphone type device with Walkman-style headphones. And we were off! How to describe the Pergamon… It features full-scale reconstructions of architectural monuments from Greek and Roman antiquity. The main attraction is the Pergamon Altar that dates back to 180 BC. The museum is undergoing extensive renovation and the room the altar is in is off limits until at least 2025. *sigh*. Oh well. We’ve both been here previously and seen it already. We spent a lot of time looking at the Ishtar Gate and Processional Way of Babylon and all the other artifacts like sarcophaguses (sarcophagi?) and plates, bowls, and all manner of other daily living items from that time period. We also saw the skull of a Neanderthal! We spent 2.5 hours here and also saw artifacts from a 6,000 year time period from the regions of Mesopotamia, Syria and Anatolia.
When we walked out of there at 6:30 pm we were done. D.O.N.E. done. We had seen most, if not all, of 3 of the. 5 museums on Museum Island. It was all we could do to drag ourselves to the U-bahn and figure out where we needed to change to get to the desired station nearest the place we wanted to have dinner. But, somehow we managed and got to the Ukrainian restaurant that we had seen on our dinner walk last night. Mom ordered a bowl of borscht (beet soup with potatoes and carrots served with a dollop of sour cream (Yum!) and I had a plate of potato pierogies. They were small but there were 9 of them! Our meals each came with a Bröetchen. I had some of Mom’s soup, and despite my pierogies being filled with mashed potatoes, she only ate 1. We shared a bottle of water. The total bill was less than $21! Wowee!
We returned to our hotel and were too stuffed for ice cream, but we did stop for a bottle of Berliner Weisse, which we shared when we got back to the room.
We each blogged and now it’s after 11 pm and time to go to bed.
My journey today was one of learning and absorbing knowledge and observing great art.
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