We decided we wanted to get a little Christmas spirit, so in December 2015 we decided to visit Berlin for the weekend to go and see the Christmas markets. We stayed at the Crowne Plaza Berlin which was a nice hotel. The breakfast was included each morning and was a very nice buffet with lots of variety. On the first afternoon/evening we got there we had a wander around the Christmas markets and walked through the main 'high street' of shops where there were lots of Christmas decorations and stalls. One thing we did notice about the stalls in the markets is that there are only about 5 different varieties of stall in the whole market and the majority of stalls are selling the exact same things...
On the second day we done the hop on hop off bus tour to see the sights of Berlin. This was very interesting and lots of information was provided to us. We stopped at sights such as Checkpoint Charlie, The Berlin Wall and the Holocaust Memorial. We also stopped at other markets throughout the day for mulled wine and Baileys hot chocolates (which were tasty and reasonably priced compared to what you would pay in London). The only thing is that the weather wasn't as cold as we thought so walking around you didn't really feel like drinking too many mulled wines and it didn't feel as Christmassy as we'd have hoped because of the weather being pretty mild.
In the evening at one of the local markets we found some fairground rides to go on, from mini roller coasters to spinning rides and the 90m sky drop which me and my dad braved to go on. It was so fun! you fell so fast it felt like you were flying and weren't going to stop!
On our final day we visited Berlin Zoo to see the animals. The zoo isn't massive and felt pretty eerie to walk around as it is very old and a little bit of a strange layout but we had a fun time seeing all of the animals. We finished off in the aquarium before heading off to a local Irish bar for dinner and drinks.
We had a lovely couple of days here as a little break and a new place to see but now we have seen it I wouldn't go back.