Potsdam is a very famous German city situated to the south west of Berlin. We decided to stay there for easy public transport access into the Motorrad Days in Berlin and avoid all the traffic in the centre of Berlin.

I had visited Potsdam before and the Sanssouci Palace is beautiful and should be seen when visiting Potsdam. However we elected to go and see the Cecilienhof palace just outside Potsdam where in July to August 1945 the Conference of Potsdam was held, to plan what the world would look like after the second world war. We had a fascinating tour of the palace seeing the rooms that were used by the three great figures of the second world war, Churchill (later Atlee), Trueman and Stalin.

The Cecilienhof is so called because it was commissioned by Emperor Wilhelm II who ordered the establishment of a fund for constructing a new palace at Potsdam for his oldest son, Crown Prince Wilhelm (William) and his wife, Duchess Cecilie of Mecklenburg-Schwerin on 19 December 1912.

We paid for a tour of the palace with an audio description of each room and it was very worthwhile for it has been magnificently preserved. Its style is based on a English Tudor Manor House. Queen Elizabeth II visited Cecilienhof on 3 November 2004.

Should you visit Potsdam, the central area of the downtown has lots of good restaurants with Brandenburger Strasse being particularly good along with lots of choice in the Dutch Quarter too, with its slightly different architecture.

The following day we left our hotel and then made our way back to England, stopping overnight at a lovely hotel called Burghotel Pass in Oeding, Germany.