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Published: July 11th 2014
Charlottenburg Schloß
From the front; there's no way to get the whole thing into a picture because it's so big.Today was a "no-museum" day. So, naturally, we went to Charlottenburg Schloß, which is a museum. 😊
By the time we were ready to leave the room, we decided to just have lunch, so we found an Indian place on the way to the bus we were going to catch. It was a nice place, and the proprietor (I assume she was the proprietor) was very pleasant and put up with our German (to the point of asking where we learned it). Cheryl had lamb korma, and I had a lamb and chicken biryani, plus we had samosas as an appetizer, and rounded it off with garlic naan. The food was tasty, but way too much; even having eaten only half of our entrees, we were stuffed.
We hobbled to the bus stop and caught a bus for
Charlottenburg Palace, which was originally a summer residence for Sophie Charlotte, the wife of Friedrich III, Elector of Brandenburg.
Friederich crowned himself King Friedrich I in 1701, and crowned Sophie Charlotte queen. The palace was originally called
Lietzenburg, but after Sophie Charlotte died in 1705, Friedrich renamed it
Charlottenburg after her. A medium-sized line of Friedrechs and Friedrich Wilhelms reigned from the
palace, including Friedrich II (whom you may know as Frederick the Great, King of Prussia).
We were able to tour the ground floor and the first floor of the palace, the former of which has been restored to be similar to what it was when Friedrich and Sophie Charlotte were there, the latter as it was when Friedrich Wilhelm IV lived there. It was about what you'd expect, pretty opulent, with intricately carved woodwork, lots of mirrors, several great rooms, and even its own chapel.
Sophie Charlotte was a patron of the arts and sciences; one of her teachers was one
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, whom you may recognize as one of the men who developed
the calculus (also developed independently by Isaac Newton, the apple guy). Sophie Charlotte had some harpsichords and virginals, one or two of which might have been the ones on display in the palace.
She was related to another guy you may have heard of, George Louis, who ended up being King George I of England, great grandfather of George III, that guy we thumbed our nose at in that
Schoolhouse Rock cartoon.
We got stuck behind a tour group about halfway through the ground floor; after waiting a
Above the entrance to the chapel
A lot of symbolism at work here. bit, and realizing they weren't going to move on, we "played through" and skipped an entire room, just to get ahead of them (they were a giant mob). We took a look through the upstairs, too, which not only featured stuff from Friedrich Wilhelm IV, but also had an exhibit dedicated to the treasures of the families who had lived there. There was more silver and porcelain than you could shake a stick at, and even Friedrich and Sophie Charlotte's crown jewels, and a whole bunch of other stuff.
After we finished inside, we stopped at the museum shop, and then set out to find the gardens, which we did, after walking around the palace to access the "back yard". It was quite a back yard, too; I have no idea how they keep it looking so nice, but somebody is working their butts off to keep it like that. We sat in the garden for a bit, waiting for the storm to roll in, which never really did, but we did get some nice cooling breezes and some clouds for the sun to go behind. The fountain also proved to be a nice mister whenever the wind picked
up, which was nice. After a couple of selfies, we decided to follow the path by the river (or canal, we weren't sure which it was), where we found a bench to sit on and watch the water. Cheryl discovered an alleged river cruise, so we set out looking for that; we did find it finally, but it turned out to be on the other side of the river, so we gave up and decided to head back to our neighborhood.
We found another
Eis place, but they didn't really have a variety of
Bechern, so we just got scoops in a cup, which we took to the neighborhood park (
Savignyplatz) and ate it while we watch a group of young people frolic on the lawn. It was very serene, and we enjoyed the relaxation, for we knew that when we got back to the room, we would have to start packing up for our departure the next day
On the way back, I was snacky, so we stopped in the pizza place next door, and drank a couple of hefeweizen while we waited for them to bake our pizza, which we took back to the room with
Crown, orb and scepter
These were König Friedrich I & Könige Sophie Charlotte's us and watched some German teevee on the German teevee machine and packed and stuff.
It was a pretty good day, and we didn't learn anything particularly depressing. 😊
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