In a surprising turn of events we decided to pass up the chance to bag two more train rides and walk a mile or so to the Reichstag. This woke us up with a bitter wind and much less sunshine than the day before. To symbolise transparent government the parliament building has a large glass 'bee hive' on top which we had hoped to walk around but the queue, which trailed outside, put us off for now. Instead we carried on past the Brandenburg gate and onto train 18, a short hop of an affair which put us close the museum island. We had a ticket for all the museums but decided to narrow our focus on just two. First up was the Pergamon museum, which showcased much of what was taken from Pergamon, including a large set of steps on which sat a temple. This was obviously a fine piece of work but the audio guides claim that it was surely a wonder of the world seemed a little strong if it was placed next to the Pyramids for instance. Further on we saw the recreated gate to Babylon, much of this had been recreated with only a few original tiles used but the effect was impressive. Sadly they decided only to build the smaller inner gate based on the fact that it would fit in the room which was a shame as the main gate would have been much more dominating. The second museum focused on artifacts recovered from Greece and the Romans. With the audio guide helping it was a fascinating tour around the relics left behind and I was pleased to find a Greek statue with the makings of love handles - not so perfect after all!

With our culture topped up it was time for lunch, something only hampered by our lack of cash. We found a cheap wrap cafe by the river and jumped in for some basic but good food which thankfully was covered by the little change we had left. The first stop for the afternoon was the cathedral. From the outside this looks impressive but doubly so once inside. The building itself is not so old, after a competition to decide the final design it was built at the end of the 1800's. It had to be rebuilt after world war II when an incendiary device took the entire room down, a  process which was only completed 40 years later. Now it stands complete and dominates the view across the park in front, despite much competition from its neighbours. We wondered around inside, first looking at the organ with 7000 pipes (!) before walking up the many steps to the top of the dome to look out across Berlin. From this windy look out we had a good view of the museum island and across to the TV tower. We went from the top to the crypt's in lots of steps to look at some huge coffins. It seemed that only the very rich and powerful got a space here, lots of crowns were on display, in stark contrast to the crypt we had seen in Lima which was much more for the common man.

The cathedral finally explored we walked back to the station we had come from for a bit of food shopping at the supermarket and train 19 to take us home for an afternoon snooze. This in turn led to train 20 taking us back much the way we had come, although as Eleanor delighted in pointing out to a station much closer to the cathedral than I had taken us from earlier. After a few laps of a selection of restaurants we settled on Italian again, which it turned out served pizza's bigger than plates and gnocchi lashed with butter. Afterwards we bagged trains 20 and 21 to take us back to the Reichstag for our second attempt to get inside. The queues were gone so we strolled up and asked to buy a ticket only to be told that you had to book in advance. In turn we asked if we were too late to book for that evening only to be told we were 3 days too late! From here we decided to once again ignore the chance of a couple of easy train rides and strolled back the way we had come in the morning, overall pretty satisfied with what we had managed to pack into a few days in Berlin.