I am delighted to place up our very first guest post! Tracey went to Germany with her man and baby boy. They hired an apartment for part of their stay, and they’d a fantastic time. Thanks so much for sharing your trip with us, Tracey!
Berlin like a Berliner
Last year my man and I took a trip to Germany with our 8-month-old son. We had extended family there and we felt that it was a fab time to travel - before the small guy could walk or voice his displeasure with the choice of activities.
We knew traveling with a baby was going to be different and we would have to make some compromises. The little guy had a regular routine at home and we decided the neatest thing for our trip would be to maintain a couple of key sides of that schedule. So each day we got to have a relaxing breakfast while he had a quick morning nap. In the day we saw the sites while he happily cat napped in his carrier. And each night we enjoyed a nice home cooked dinner and adult conversation after he went to bed. This worked especially well when visiting with friends and family.
Our trip included stops in Grunstadt, Chemnitz, Nurenberg, Munich, Berlin and Neuschwanstein in the Bavarian Alps. For most of our trip we were staying with family. But for Berlin we were on our own.
So we booked a goedkoop appartement berlijn instead of a hotel. This gave us a kitchen so we’d be able to have a pleasant breakfast each day, and make dinner each night ( although we frequently had a late lunch out and failed to need dinner ). An appartement huren berlijn also gave us a bedroom in which the little guy could retire each night while we ate, played cards, folks watched, and so on.
It was straightforward to find and book a studio at OH Holidays. There had been a wide selection of flats throughout Berlin available for all sorts of budgets. We wanted something in central Berlin and close to the metro with a bedroom, washing, kitchen, crib, high chair, etc.
Our little one bedroom flat was on the 4th floor of an old apartment block in the former East Berlin neighbourhood of Friedrichshain. The building was one of the few in the area that had survived thru WWII and communism and it was full of personality. The neighbourhood was a genuine fun eclectic mix of people and right outside our door were grocery stores, street side cafeterias, restaurants, clubs, shops, coffee, net, etc . In the day it was just a short metro ride to all of the key sites. And we in the evening we enjoyed folks watching from our balcony.
It was naturally a long walk up those steps with a baby in a carrier after a dull day of sightseeing and there wasno hotel staff or room service at our beck and call. But we had the liberty to make our own meals, do washing and make ourselves truly at home - all at a cheaper price than most hotels. We felt like we were seeing Berlin from a Berliners standpoint.