Boyfriend and I headed off to Berlin early December for a well deserved city break. Berlin has always been on our wish list but we never got around to it before and the Christmas markets in December provided us with the perfect excuse! We had a truly amazing weekend. I’ll take it from the top…
We flew out from Dublin at the reasonable hour of an 11am Ryanair flight to Berlin Schonefeld. Boyfriend got chatting to a wacky Irish girl sitting next to us on the plane. CA as she called herself lived in Berlin for over a year and was all about the nightlife. CA recommend that we take a visit to the ‘best bar in Berlin’ AKA Roses. How right was she!!! We paid a visit to Roses that very night at 12am after a plethora of cocktails and a fabulous Vietnamese meal in Hoi Naam located beside GorlitzerBahnhof in Kreuzberg. The meal brought back memories of the amazing culinary delights we experienced in Vietnam in 2009. The food was authentic and very easy on the pocket too. Two starters, two mains and two bottles of beer came to EUR18. Bargain central! Our next stop was a bar across the street called Hanibals .The all night happy hour sealed the deal here for us. After a few post dinner cocktails we made our way over to Roses bar on 187 Oranienstrasse in Kreuzberg. Roses was amazing! It doesn’t get camper or kitcher than in Roses. The walls and ceilings were covered in bright pink fur and bar was packed with fine young homosexual Berliner hipsters mixed with a bunch of New Yorkers on pilgrimage to the hipster mecca that is Berlin. The crowd were extremely friendly, so much so that we stayed partying the night away until 5am. The bar woman in the front bar was particularly hilarious in her antics. On the way back to the hotel, we were hounded by the locals to continue the night at the main club in Berlin but alas we were bunched so back to the hotel we went.
We stayed in the Radisson in Alexanderplatz in der Mitte. Now this was one handy hotel in an excellent location. On arrival, the friendly receptionist asked if we had any preferences. I replied ” a room as high as possible”. We were offered a compact room on the 28th floor with an amazing view of the city which we took in earnest.
The following day, Boyfriend and I explored Berlin, rambling through the busy streets, sampling Gluhwein at the many Christmas markets scattered all over the city. That evening we met up with an old Irish friend who had recently moved to Berlin with her German girlfriend. We met them later that evening at the Christmas markets in Charlottenburg. Next stop their trendy apartment in Kreuzberg, then back to Roses to for some more debauchery.
Berlin is an amazing city and I would love to make a return trip in the summer. It has it all. It may not be as polished as Paris or Barcelona but it makes up for it in terms of edginess and cool vibe that is virtually all over the city. Ich bin ein Berliner…
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Tags: Alexanderplatz, Berlin, boyfriend, Christmas Markets, City Break, Fun, gay, Germany, Kreuzberg, LGBT, Radisson, Roses
January 1, 2012 at 2:03 pm |
Sounds like so much fun!