We braved the cold and strong winds and visited several places in Berlin. But first, let’s talk about our hotel and Checkpoint Charlie. We stayed at the Mercure Hotel and Residenz Berlin Checkpoint Charlie. It is a nice hotel, in a good location, and just around the corner from Checkpoint Charlie. We recommend it.

For those who need a refresher, Checkpoint Charlie was the best-known border crossing between East and West Berlin during the Cold War. It became a symbol of the Cold War, representing the separation of East and West.

When Berlin was divided into East and West, the former military checkpoint was controlled by the Americans. Only foreigners, employees of the Permanent Mission of the Federal Republic of Germany in the GDR, and GDR officials were allowed to cross the border here.

Important Site of the Cold War

There was hardly any other place where the atmosphere of the Cold War was as frosty as at Checkpoint Charlie. The border crossing gained notoriety in October 1961 after the construction of the Berlin Wall: in the last days of October, American and Soviet tanks took up positions here after members of the US mission were asked to identify themselves at the GDR border post when passing through the Allied checkpoint. Soviet and Allied tanks faced each other with live ammunition and a third world war almost ensued. In the years that followed, the checkpoint was the scene of spectacular escapes which often ended in death.

Here it is today! The “sandbags” are made of cement.

I bought this cup at the museum you see in the picture. It isn’t glass or ceramic so it should last on Seahike, unlike the glass glasses we foolishly brought onboard.

We thoroughly enjoyed our short time in Lucerne. But because we were on the fastest trip ever to see several sites in Switzerland, it was time to get a move on. Our next stops were Interlaken Ost and Grindelwald. We arrived in Interlaken Ost the evening of the 20th, so we had the full day to visit Grindelwald. If we’d had more time, we would have spent a full day in Interlaken West.

On the walk to the station to go to Grindelwald, we saw a paraglider – yes, paragliding in the middle of the cold winter! Don’t get me wrong, I liked my paragliding experience and I liked my 46 (? – give or take, I don’t recall exactly) skydiving experiences, but I did them when it was warm. No thank you to what this guy is doing! Here he is landing in the park right by our hotel.

Here are two more pictures of Interlaken Ost.

And just like that, we were in Grindelwald. Initial pictures:

If you haven’t read the January 16-18 blog about our visits to Munich and Ulm, you might want to read that first. In the end, the order is immaterial. Just sayin’ that there’s another blog about Munich.

Our main goal (we had a late start) was to get to the glockenspiel before noon to see the re-enactment of a Medieval tournament. It does this at 11:00 a.m. and noon. We had time to visit St. Peter’s church on the way. Actually, we didn’t really visit it so much as utilize the tower for a view. Michael decided to hang out down below while I climbed the 306 steps to the top. The view was quite nice.

Everything that happened next was all about the glockenspiel. I took a video with my phone and grabbed screenshots, so the pics aren’t that great, but I hope it gives you an idea of the “show.”

First, it just shows people and knights hanging out. There is a bit of jousting, but no one is hurt. Then one of the knights gets the other one with the joust. When that happened, Michael said with a dramatic flair, “Oh no, he got him!”

It was time to take another trip. We had planned to go to Germany, Switzerland, and Spain, but we had to limit the trip to Germany and Switzerland. Here’s why: We had to wait until we had been out of Schengen for 90 days, so the earliest we could go to a Schengen country was January 13. Plus, Michael wanted us to return to Tunisia no later than January 26 because they were going to work on Seahike (sand her bottom and apply new antifoul paint) “sometime in late January.”

In the end, we had a total of 10 days for our vacation. Due to available flights and weird extremes of costs, we started in Munich, then went to Switzerland, then went back to Germany to Berlin, then to Monastir. Today’s blog is about our first few days of the trip, in Munich and Ulm.

We first want to give a shoutout to Hotel City Demas in Munich. It is a lovely hotel, with friendly staff, and is within walking distance of lots of stuff. We arrived later in the day so our main goal the first night was to go to a beer hall. We got a nice night-time view of the Neues Rathaus along the way. Here is our hotel and Neues Rathaus (which we visited again in the daytime):

The beer hall was fun. You just grab any old table and plop down. We were fortunate to plop down next to two friendly gentlemen, and not far from the little band. The beer, music and company were all excellent. We ate something, but I don’t remember what it was.

This is where we went: Hofbräuhaus München. A legendary history. After centuries of producing beer for the royals, in 1828 the Hofbräuhaus was opened to the public by King Ludwig I of Bavaria. The beer hall quickly became the center of public and political life in Munich, counting famous names such as Mozart and Lenin amongst its regular customers. 

We only have two days left of what was supposed to have been a six-day road trip. We sort of “lost” the first two days due to the package ordeal, but we are still satisfied with the trip. We are especially excited for today.

But let’s get back to last night. We arrived at the Maison D’Hôtes Dar Fatima in the early evening. This is a B&B and what a B&B it is! We 100 percent recommend this to anyone who wants to stay in a lovely home, with delightful and friendly proprietors, and excellent food! Oh, if you like cats, you will like one of their cats. Even they say that one is nice and one is mean! 🙂

Here are a few pictures of the rooms and the terrace:

We ate a big breakfast and headed out the door.

I’d told Michael that I wanted pictures of camels today. We hadn’t seen many at all thus far (maybe three?) and hadn’t taken any pictures. Boy, did we hit the motherload of camels!!! I mean, we didn’t really hit them, we just admired them. First there was just this one guy by the side of the road:

Then, there were 11 camels crossing the road. . . . quite near a camel crossing sign. 🙂 🙂

We decided to take a road trip. As I began investigating places, I learned that several Star Wars scenes were filmed here. In fact, Tunisia is distinguished as the country with the second most number of unique Star Wars film sites (12 in total).

Our road trip began with a bit of a challenge.

Day One:
We first drove to Tunis (2.5 hours in the “wrong” direction) because a portside window that was supposed to have been delivered to the marina was held up in Customs. Not knowing where exactly to go, we went to the airport. One person directed us to an office at the airport. After finding someone who spoke English there, we were told to go somewhere else. There, we located a FedEx agent who told us that we had to go to a different location to see the Customs Inspector. He mentioned that the inspector works from 9:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. It was about 2:00 p.m. at this point. He told us we could go there anyway to see if they would release the package.

The building he showed us on the map turned out to be the wrong building. After asking a few people where to go, we found the FedEx building. Here we learned two things: 1) the package was there, and 2) they would not release the package until the inspector had done his thing. We were instructed to return to return at 9:00 a.m. the next day.

We didn’t want to drive 2.5 hours back to Monastir only to have to return the next morning, so we spent the night in Tunis. We stayed at a lovely hotel and had a nice dinner. But we completely missed the site we were supposed to have visited that day.

Day Two:
We arrived at the FedEx office the next morning at about 9:30. The inspector arrived at about 10:30 a.m. He informed us that we needed to pay a 100 TD fee, but that we needed to go elsewhere to pay it. Luckily, the “payment” location was where we’d been the day before, so we knew where to go. We made the payment and headed back to FedEx with the receipt. We paid another 18 TD (why, we don’t know) to FedEx, after which they assured us that they would mail the package to the marina.

We now needed to drive straight to our hotel, so we didn’t get to see what we’d planned to see on the second day. We drove the last hour in the rain and darkness on some iffy roads, with water, sand and rather large rocks deposited at unexpected intervals due to recent heavy rains. We enjoyed the view of the thousands of trees planted along the way, as well as how the terrain changed from orange to tan.

We left Palermo on October 13 for our two-day sail to Tunisia.

Why did we go to Tunisia? The main reason is because it isn’t in Schengen. The other reason is that it is on the southern coast of the Mediterranean Sea/northern coast of Africa and therefore a warm place to spend the winter. Finally, we’d read that Monastir Marina was a very popular marina for cruisers. We had joined a Monastir Group Page on WhatsApp and had already been in communication with a couple of the cruisers. We learned that they get together for a BBQ every Sunday and also enjoy happy hours, coffee, and watching football (soccer) games together. We were pretty excited to get to the marina!

We had to motor the entire way to Tunisia. There was little to no wind. Here are some pictures of our trip to Tunisia, including arriving in the middle of the night, where we anchored outside of the marina until daylight (in fact, not until midday; we slept in and took our sweet time). I should note that we didn’t see land for most of the trip, but the pictures I took include the land because they are more interesting than just looking at water. 🙂

We had hoped to leave for Palermo earlier than we did. We had to wait for a repaired battery charger to be delivered to Seahike.

To be perfectly honest, though, we probably needed the break. We had come down with something (we later learned it was Covid) during our trip to Venice and Cinque Terre. My theory is that we picked it up on the train from Venice to Cinque Terre. At any rate, we were both tired and wouldn’t have wanted to make an overnight sail. Sometimes the stars align in really weird ways!

We left about 30 seconds after the package was delivered to Seahike on October 10. We were able to sail a bit, but we motored most of the way. We arrived in Palermo on October 11. Here are some pictures of our arrival in Palermo. I also want to call out Sitimar Marina. It was wonderful and the staff members were SO helpful!!!

My legs felt well worked out after climbing hundreds of steps the prior day, but I was still excited for today’s two hikes.

The first hike was from our “home town” of Riomaggiore to Manarola. This would be arguably the most difficult hike because it was basically up, up, up, up, down, down, down, down. No flat sections to speak of. I will admit that my thighs felt the up, up, up, up, but they agreed to keep going.

Here’s the info about the trail from a Cinque Terre trail website:

Hiking trail Riomaggiore – Manarola – (Via Beccara)
Difficulty: difficult
Length: 1.8 km
Duration: 1h (Note that this lists one hour, but the map lists 36 minutes. One hour was correct.)
Hiking fee: no
This trail between Manarola and Riomaggiore is an alternative to Via dell’Amore (which is currently closed) and can be done in either direction. (I went from Riomaggiore to Manarola.)
The Cinque Terre Card is not required for this trail. Very good physical condition is required!
The villages of Riomaggiore and Manarola are very close to one another but have a very steep mountain separating them. Half an hour of challenging climb due to the number of steep stairs up over the ridge, through a metal gate as you pass across the high point then drop through terraced small-plot grape fields into a beautiful town for refreshments. The trail offers panoramic sea views.

Our visit to Cinque Terre was all about hiking for me. Most of you understand by now that Michael can’t exert himself much due to his heart issues. But he is a great sport about meeting me somewhere after I’ve hiked there.

Today’s first hike began in Corniglia. I bought a Cinque Terre Tren card and took the train from Riomaggiore to Corniglia. The Tren card made the most sense because I would be hiking the two trails that have a fee associated with them (the other two I would be hiking are free) and would be taking the train enough to make the Tren card the way to go. Michael also bought the Tren card, but for him it was because he would be taking the train numerous times.

The first portion of the hike consisted of climbing the 383 steps to Corniglia, the only one of the five towns not located at sea level. Once there, I walked around a bit to enjoy the town. It is very pretty.