I woke up at one o’clock. PM. I didn’t know that yet, but I did notice that everyone else has disappeared so I leaned over for my phone to check the time. I did a double take and had to check again to make sure I really had slept though the whole morning.For a moment I panicked and thought that the others had probably got up and gone out at 8 or some equally reasonable hour, leaving me to slumber through the whole day, but then I found that the bathroom was occupied so at least one of them was still there. It turned out to be Chris.

By the time we were ready to go it was almost two, and once we’d found Sunil and had lunch we had only half the afternoon left. We headed for the station to book our onward train tickets, but the office had closed already. It seemed particularly pathetic that this was the first thing we had tried to do today, and we missed the closing time. We did see a notice boldly advising all travellers that people should not attempt to visit Prague or Dresden due to damage caused by recent flooding. It went as far as to call it ‘voyeuristic tourism’, so we agreed to give Prague a miss.

We headed to Unter Den Linden on the U-Bahn. Walking down the steps into the metro station, an elderly woman tapped me and indicated her bag. I carried it back up the steps for her, and she rewarded me with a metro ticket that she’d obviously finished using but was valid for the rest of the day. I thanked her and she walked off. I bounded back down the steps triumphantly waving the ticket, since the other three would still have to pay the €3.10 daily ticket charge, but on closer inspection the ticket appeared to be a single trip ticket. So this woman had managed to get me to carry her bag up the stairs and used me as a convienient rubbish bin at the same time. You’ve got to admire the cunning of it. I bought a proper ticket, and we went to Unter Den Linden.

We walked along it, stopping to see the British Embassy, which I’d been told was quite striking. On the way we passed the Russian one – suitably grand looking with a mansion-house style, flag flying from the top, bronze plaque, and wrought iron fencing. When the British embassy came into view I could see why this particular one was so well known. It was of sandstone blocks, clearly a modern construction, with bright blue and purple rooms jutting out at odd angles. I liked it, but the others were unimpressed.

A little further down the road we came across a museum and a very grand church standing next to a derelict soviet-era industrial complex with shattered windows and graffitied girders. Although East Berlin is undergoing a massive construction programme, twelve years on there are still these monstrous architectural catastrophes hanging around. Nearby a park held more defunct monuments to communism – two steel monoliths had photos of national achievements on them. I recognised a few, such as Yuri Gagarin’s space flight.

Sunil spotted some trams and insisted we go for a ride and “see what’s around”. The rest of the afternoon was therefore spent going out to the suburbs, which looked like any suburb anywhere in the world, and then coming back to town. I think you can tell I wasn’t best pleased with this plan.

The Reichstag has a restaurant on top which we decided to go to for dinner, despite knowing it would probably be expensive. To get in we passed through a security check which impressively found two out of four of our bags interesting enough to search. The lift took us up to the roof. I was quite surprised by the dome, which I thought would be an integral part of the building, but in fact sits on top of it. You have to cross an area of open roof in order to enter the dome.

Thoughts of dinner were temporarily put on the back burner while we checked out the dome. Designed by Norman Foster the dome was commissioned in 1993 and it’s purpose (apart from looking nice) is to funnel light into the main debating chamber.

Around the edge of the dome a gently sloping spiral walkway led us to the top, where there is a seating area and not much else. I got someone to take a picture of the four of us and then we walked back down, using another walkway starting on the other side, which interweaves with the up-walkway.

Around the base of the dome there were a circle of photos chronicling the turbulent history of the Reichstag, from it’s construction to the opening of the glass dome and return of the Federal Government. Particularly chilling was a picture of a meeting of the national socialists that took place several years before the start of the war.

The restaurant was full, so we descended in the lift and spent some time messing about with group photos at the base. Once of the floodlights pointing at the Reichstag was creating an interesting effect on the courtyard behind the building, and I managed to get a very cool shot of myself looking like I’m glowing.

It was getting very late for dinner (about 23:30), so we eventually had ice cream at a late night place near Potsdamer Platz, where comedy photos were taken, and we managed the last U-Bahn back to the hotel. The ice cream place was very imaginative. You’d think that only selling ice cream would limit their menu options, but no – lasagne, hamburgers, and spaghetti were just some of the tasty options available, all entirely composed of ice cream.