Got off the ship around 8am and tried to look for the Sixt counter. We went to the main cruise terminal located to the right of the ship and was told to look for the Sixt rep back at our terminal. Finally found a guy wearing an orange Sixt shirt at the parking lot and got our rental car. The car we were given was an Audi A6 station wagon which was better than I expected and perfect for our group of 5. The GPS was kind of hard to figure out and while already driving I realized it was going to take us in a direction where we had to pay a toll (I researched earlier the route we were supposed to take). I had to stop and change the GPS setting to avoid tolls and then continued on.
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| Audi A6 from Sixt |
I've always wanted to experience driving on the autobahn with no speed limit. For brief stretches, I took the car up to 180 kph but mostly I kept it around 140 kph. Even at that speed, a few cars passed me as if I was standing still.
Arrived in Berlin around 10:45am and parked at
Hallen am Borsigturm, a shopping mall near Tegel airport. Got some euros in an ATM inside the mall and took the U6 U-Bahn to Berlin. We purchased the small group day ticket for €15.50 which is good for up to 5 people. I tried to use my Visa card on the ticket machine and realized it does not take Visa. It takes only Maestro cards and a couple of electronic cards which I didn't recognize. I also tried to pay using a €50 bill but it doesn't take any bills bigger than €20. Fortunately, my daughter got some €20 bills from the ATM.
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| Hallen am Borsigturm |
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| Borsigwerke U-Bahn Station |
Our original plan was to take the Berlin free walking tour which starts at 11am. I'm not sure if the free walking tour has been cancelled like the one in Copenhagen but in any case we were not able to make the 11am start time. I'm glad that we didn't take the walking tour because it was really hot in Berlin that day. The temperature must have been in the mid 80's and there was no way we could walk for 3 hours. We decided to eat lunch first at Starbucks at the Brandenburg gate and then take the
hop-on hop-off Berlin classic tour at the Brandenburger Tor stop. The price was €15/€5 adult/child when purchased at the bus. We took the round trip tour which took about 2 hours, getting off at the Berlin Wall and Checkpoint Charlie stops. At the end of the tour, we went back to the same Starbucks (I swear it's the busiest Starbucks I've ever seen) to get some drinks. Did I mention it was really hot that day?
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| Brandenburg Gate |
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| Berlin Wall Memorial |
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| Checkpoint Charlie |
My daughter and her boyfriend decided to rent bicycles at this place
http://www.takeabike.de/. The price was €8 for 4 hours. They claimed it was fun but the heat and ongoing construction around the city made it really difficult.
Around 4pm, we took the U6 back to Hallen am Borsigturm, did a little bit of shopping at the mall and drove back to Warnemünde around 5:30pm. We arrived back at the port around 7:30pm and dropped off the rental car key at a Sixt drop box inside the main cruise terminal.
I decided to rent a car to Berlin because I thought it gave us the most flexibility and a better value. The car rental plus gas, parking, subway tickets and hop-on hop tickets cost less than $300 for all five of us. The Princess excursions cost $309 or $195 per person and they use old trains with no air conditioning for the 3 hour trip. Our drive took 2 hours one way. Another option that I also considered was taking our own train to Berlin but the return trip back to Warnemünde on the ICE train arrives at 7:50pm which is too close for comfort to the all-aboard time.
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