East, Central & West Berlin

One Marriott Moments auction set the date. From there, we built a three-night Berlin weekend around it, moving from Friedrichshain in the east to Potsdamer Platz in the center and Kurfürstendamm in the west.

Three hotels, one unusual food experience, and three quite different parts of the city.

The Ritz-Carlton stay and Gourmet Odyssey were already fixed. Everything else was built around them, including the decision to change hotels each night rather than use one base for the whole weekend.

We started in Friedrichshain, at a Hyatt property about a 10–15 minute walk from the East Side Gallery. It gave us a useful first base before the trip moved toward central Berlin.

The winning 80,000-point Marriott Moments bid included the daytime Gourmet Odyssey together with a night at the Ritz-Carlton, breakfast and a €100 hotel credit.

The Ritz-Carlton at Potsdamer Platz wasn’t really a separate booking decision. It came with the Marriott Moments package, putting us in central Berlin for the middle of the weekend.

For the final night we moved to Kurfürstendamm. The Lindner was a much more understated stay than the Ritz and gave us a final, different base before leaving Berlin.

The three hotel stays and Gourmet Odyssey used a mix of cash and Marriott points, with points earned back across both Marriott and Hyatt. The final accounting shows what the weekend actually cost.

By the end of the weekend, we had stayed in three quite different parts of Berlin: Friedrichshain, Potsdamer Platz and Kurfürstendamm. The Marriott Moments auction had fixed the date and the middle night; the rest of the trip developed around it.

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