The Hamburg Excursion

After getting up bright and early, which as most people know, is one of my favorite things, we departed for Hamburg! Many naps were taken, and many pictures snapped, my own included. We were trying to see the countryside, but the infamous German fog put an end to those ideas.

We arrived in Hamburg, and I felt completely disoriented due to lack of knowledge about the city. But I had elected to take the bus tour with included boat tour, and hopped on my first double-decker bus for the hourish long English/German tour. One area where the old money lives has prices  that start at 15,000 Euros per square meter and there's no upper limit. And the area by the waterfront went for 7,000 Euros a square meter.

From there we went to check in at the youth hostel, which was a really good mix of a hotel and a dorm in my opinion, before returning back to the cold and windy day.  

My group decided to go ahead a take the boat tour due to the forecast for rain the next day. And the decision was made to sit outside on the boat to look at everything. 

That decision was probably not the wisest, but it did provide a better opportunity for seeing the barges in the harbor. They were gigantic!

I choose to believe that this is the Stay Puft Marshmallow Boy

Look at our fabulous windswept selves

The Lion King boats were all really cute. This one is named Nala.

No idea about this submarine. The downside to being outside is that the speaker where the tour guide spoke was gettin drowned out by the wind noise.

Following that, we went and did a tiny amount of shopping before taking the tunnel that passes under the canal. It's free for pedestrians!

From there we met up with the rest of the group back at the hostel before going out to dinner, finally winding up at an Italian restaurant. There was some form of protest or demonstration happening outside shortly after sitting down, but we had no problems from that. After a really delicious lasagne dish, some of us, myself included returned to the hostel for some much needed rest. 

The next morning, breakfast was very similar to what Carolyn and I had been getting every day so far. Following that, our whole group went to try and see the Miniature Wonderland, which is the biggest train model set-up in the world? Or just Germany. I don't quite remember what it's claim to fame was exactly, as my group chose to not wait 40 minutes to see it in favor of exploring the city a bit more. 

We saw a lot of churches. The first one we went into was St. Katherinen, which was actually have a book sale to support their children's choir. From there we saw many other churches, including St. Michael's, which really is stunning.

We went back to the city center to hang around, and I got to eat a hamburger at a place called Curry Papa for lunch.

Once we were back at the station to meet up for the train, there was a flash mob in the middle of Hauptbahnhof. I managed to get a pretty decent video of it.

Tomorrow's the final day!

~Elizabeth S