Checkpoint Charlie

One thing about planning, budgeting and then booking your own holiday, is that you're never 100% sure what they place you've booked will be like. It is daunting enough (but also exciting) visiting a foreign city, let alone choosing a hotel/apartment/bed. Being a family of four there is no way we could have all of us in. one. room (ie. like a hotel) so we usually budget for an apartment.

The next thing you have to decide when on after you choose what type of accommodation is what area you are going to stay in. In the city centre? In an inner suburb? Close to all the hot spots?

After umming and ahhing about Berlin, we settled on Checkpoint Charlie Apartments.

Checkpoint Charlie Apartments, the grey building.  Our apartment was on the right hand side, four windows up.

The Apartments weren't called Checkpoint Charlie for nothing.  It was literally around the corner from this;

Thanks for MrL for this pic he took on his camera...

That's the now-kitschy, Checkpoint Charlie, awash with tourists.  (Us included.)  For those of you unsure what exactly this is, it has to do with the Berlin Wall.  Shortly after the wall was erected, US President Kennedy ordered three border control points along the wall.  Checkpoint Charlie became the most famous as it was the only one designated for foreigners, diplomats and members of the Allied Forces.

There isn't much left of the original point.  In it's place is a small gate house (I doubt it is original), a row of sandbags and some actors posing as US Military, whom you can get a photo taken with, at a price of course!

We actually saw a guy 'planking' on those sandbags. =)

It is pretty impressive to see and to remember the Cold War. There is huge murals near the Point explaining facts about the Berlin Wall and of Checkpoint Charlie itself. Quite Educational.

MrL and I did have a giggle at one point as we were looking at a map of what we were looking at. As we were looking at the marker point which read 'You Are Here', Monet became quite confused. "How does the map know we are here?" Maybe you had to be there but that had MrL and I quite close to tears.