The town is bigger than I'd remembered and it took a while to get from place to place. We managed to get to Potsdam just after the Neues Palais (1769) opened. At the moment, the only palace you need an allotted time for beforehand is Sanssouci. Here they give you a time on the spot. We got our tickets at 10.30. and we looked around marvelling at the pretty Prussian architecture especially its fantastic façade and back (the garden view is a superb), the marble hall, which I though was closed for the moment, but it wasn't. There's also a room with thousands of sea shells. We attempted to go to Cecilenhof where Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill had signed the Potsdam Treaty between 17 July - 2 August 1945, but we were running out of time to see Sanssouci (we had to be there for 2.50pm). I had been back in 2012 and we preferred not to rush around and stop by at a German-Austrian speciality beer garden restaurant we saw by chance while passing on the bus. I had the calf schnitzerla and babe tried the Berliner sausage.

The approach to Sanssouci palace (1745-47) through the gardens is magnificent as you see the fountain and the scale of the place from the outside gives you the impressions of greatness; in other words, despite the grandeur from the outside, the interior is quite small for such a palace (though it's a summer palace) and more intimate than you might think.