Berlin is a big, spread-out city (especially sprawling when compared to Paris), with a wide variety of neighbourhoods. We were staying in an old West Berlin neighbourhood between Charlottenburg and Willmersdorf, which felt like it could easily have been in Munich or Düsseldorf. But then in the centre, you have what can only be Berlin: the very grand Prussian architecture of Museum Island and the Brandenburg Gate, modern steel and metal high-rises sprouting up in what used to be the no-man's land of Potsdamer Platz. Then there's crowded hipster buzz of neighbourhoods like Kreuzberg and Neukölln directly adjacent to the

Düsseldorf was our inflection point as we turned north from France towards Scandinavia. My mother's home town, it was somewhere I went to annually as child to visit my grandparents. It's probably not on most itineraries for the Ruhr region (nearby Köln/Cologne is bigger and cooler) but it's a lovely place to stop, accessible and welcoming, with just that right amount of familiarity (at least for me). We were only there for a couple of nights, but that was enough to go for an evening stroll along the banks of the Rhine, snag some bargains in the city's excellent clothes