In the afternoon of our first full day in Berlin, I had to see Kadewe Department Store.  We had heard so much about it from the press and media in the States and we wanted to see it for ourselves.  It sounded so much like Harrod's of London, the way travel shows portrayed it on TV.

Since it was a Sunday, 99% of the stores along the Ku'damm area of Berlin turned out to be closed.  We did locate the store and decided we would visit it again once it opened on a weekday.

The steel sculpture in Ku'damm very close to the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church

This is what we were hoping to see.

Looking for the ruins of the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church turned out to be a horrific task.  We spent a good three hours looking for the ruins.  We didn't know it was completely covered in scaffolding.  We saw the structure which now looks like a steel building as soon as we came out of the metro station.  We even went around it several times.  It took a kind local from Berlin to point out the structure to us.

The tall white and gray structure on the left actually contains the ruins of the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church.  The first time we saw it as we exited the metro station we had no inkling whatsoever it was a scaffolding at all.  To us, it looked like a regular building.

Given the scaffolding all over the ruins of the church, we could only then visit the inside the of the church ruins.  It was actually a very small part of the church remaining given it was bombed during the Second World War.

Completed in 1895 as a memorial to Kaiser Wilhelm II, it was  deliberately left in ruins as a reminder of the horrors of war.  Today it contains a small museum with displays of stone murals, mosaics, and religious statues.

During the three hours we went around in circles looking for the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, we stumbled upon the Berlin Zoo.  We didn't go in but the cute entrance deserved a photo op.  It was the first time I had ever seen a zoo with Chinoiserie decor.

At the Berlin Zoo

Alexanderplatz

From Alexanderplatz, we went to visit the Old Berlin Rathaus, the Berlin Cathedral, St. Marienkirche, and more.  All of which were walking distance from each other.

The TV Tower erected by the East Germans close to Alexanderplatz

The Old Berlin Rathaus

The TV Tower

St. Marienkirche

Entrance to the St. Marienkirche

St. Marienkirche and the TV Tower