After we left the river we wandered past some of the various embassies and continued up the Unter den Linden which you could say is similar to Paris' Champs Elysées. I wanted something to drink by now so when I saw espresso we had to stop. It was this cool shop called Ampelmann. New for me but found out it was precisely here that the first traffic lights with the original Ampelmännchen stood.

As we left Ampelmann and crossed the road I noticed this inside a window. The Volkswagon Group store. No VWs but an Audi, a Porsche, a Bentley, a Skoda and of course the car that caught my eye. A Lamborghini Huracán Spyder.

I went past the following day and realised I'd missed this the first time. A nice bike but it's made with a timber frame. Awesome!

On Mandy's last trip to Berlin she joined a HP on hop off your. On the loop she has seen a nice square so we headed in that direction for lunch. The square was Gendarmenmarkt and this is the back view of the Französischer Dom.

Französischer Dom (the term is German for "French Cathedral", but in the case of Gendarmenmarkt Dom refers to the French word for English "dome" and not to a cathedral. Neither church on Gendarmenmarkt was ever the church of a bishop. The terminology is a relic of francophone Frederick the Great, who was instrumental in enhancing Gendarmenmarkt) is the colloquial designation for the "French Church of Friedrichstadt".

The Konzerthaus Berlin, built as a theatre from 1818 to 1821, is a concert hall in the centre of the Gendarmenmarkt square in the central Mitte district of Berlin and houses the German orchestra Konzerthausorchester Berlin.

Taking in a little of the square and the statue of Germany's renowned poet Friedrich Schiller.

A little proof I was there😬

This is a rear view of the The Neue Kirche. The German cathedral was in the act of cleaning or restoration so the front was covered in scaffolds.

As mentioned earlier we were here for lunch. So we found a seat spitting distance to the Neue Kirche.

And it was enjoyable.

Following lunch it was only a short talk from Gendarmenmarkt to Checkpoint Charlie.

Berlin divided.

Divided by this wall. You can see this just down from Checkpoint Charlie at the Topographie see Terrors.

A old photo of the early wall system. East German leader Walter Ulbricht agitated and maneuvered to get the Soviet Union's permission to construct the Berlin Wall in 1961 to stop Eastern Bloc emigration and defection westward through the Soviet border system, preventing escape across the city sector border from communist East Berlin into West Berlin.