For my half century birthday, Doreen and I went to Berlin for the weekend. While the weather was lousy, we did manage a few hours of cycling.
It’s a superb city for visiting on two wheels. Plenty of parks and bike-only lanes, and generally wide roads with shared bus/bike lanes. Bike rental signs are absolutely everywhere, and there is also an official bike share program with plenty of stations and bikes. We rode twice: one big ride with bikes from our hotel. And one short ride with official city bikes.
This is our fifth “bike tour” of a big European city. I would rate Berlin as an excellent place to visit by bike. The other four with links to details:
Excellent: Cycling Paris with Vélib’ Bikeshare
Excellent: Exploring Torino
Good: London by Bike
Better without a bike: Rome Bike Tour
Edit: A couple more city trips:
Excellent: Vienna with city bikes including the Danube.
Excellent: Munich with city bikes.
What do I recommend? I am no Berlin expert and we only scratched the surface but: The Tiergarten (a big park) is lovely, with paths everywhere. Just explore and you can’t help but run into lots of interesting monuments.
Then follow our red path on the map to Charlottenburg Palace (and its surrounding park). If you stay on the south side of the river there is a nice bike path (we only returned on it).
Perhaps the two most famous attractions in the Berlin are then just on the east edge of the Tiergarten: The Reichstag, and the Brandenburger Tor.
Ride through the Brandenburg Gate and you will be on Unter Den Linden – sort of the Champs-Elysées of Berlin. Along the street you will pass countless churches, museums, opera houses, etc. Eventually ending up on Museuminsel (museum island), where most of the best museums are located.
Below is a map of Berlin with some of the main tourist sites marked (click for photo/name). The red track was our big bike ride. Purple was part bike, part walk, and blue was just walking in the rain.
Lots of Photos:
Berlin Beer Bike:
4 Comments
50! Congratulations! May you find joy in cycling for countless years to come (so we can all keep getting inspiration from this blog)!
Happy Birthday! If you make it back to Berlin, then i definitely recommend an excursion out to Potsdam to see the Sanassouci palace. Either ride there or take one of the frequent suburban trains.
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thank you so much for your good information. good bike good ride.