Brilliant Apartments

We were originally going to use reward points to stay at one of the large, brand-name hotels in the center of Berlin (Mitte), but got priced out (pointed out?) when a 3rd family member wanted to join. In the meantime I read about the Prenzlauer Berg neighborhood and decided it was worth a short subway ride to stay at a trendy/artsy neighborhood. Well this location did not disappoint; It's on Oderberger Strasse, maybe half a block from the Mauerpark, where you can see remnants of the wall, and the street surrounding the apartments are all interesting restaurants. It's a 10 minute walk to the Eberswalde Strasse subway station, which will take you all over Berlin. The notion of taking an apartment over a hotel is that for about the same cost or less as two hotel rooms, you can get an apartment which now comes with all these amenities. As well, many apartments (ours was one) have a washing machine which allows one to pack much less clothing; just do laundry partway through your stay. OK, the location is good, what about the apartment itself? We took one of the Superior two bedroom apartments, it has two bedrooms, 1 bath with shower, 1 bath with sink and toilet only, a kitchen with room for 6 at the dining table. To us, the apartment mirrored the neighborhood with a mix of modern (kitchen and bath) with the old (the floor, the wallpaper, the furniture). The apartment is perfectly comfortable, helping us get over jet lag from the West Coast of the USA in perhaps 3-4 days. The kitchen has a refrigerator, a 2 burner induction stove, oven, coffee makers, hot water pot, and dishwasher. No microwave oven (in any of the units, apparently), but one can easily make do. If you take a front unit, you may get street noise in the nighttime with the restaurants, plus early morning trash pickup. You have to decide if being able to people watch on the street is worth the extra noise. It won't bother New York City residents, for example. You can tell the front units by their number beginning with a V. The back units begin with an H. The back units will have a view of another building and a courtyard. We liked our front unit, if nothing else you can amuse yourself by watching the fire engines back into their garage through very narrow openings. I believe none of the units have air conditioning/cooling capability (like most of Europe). This is something to note if visiting during the summer, and you are bothered by street noise.