We arrived in Hamburg late afternoon on Monday 2nd November. Reece’s sister and brother-in-law had rented an apartment within walking distance of town, so we were able catch up on washing which was great, and they had dinner organised for us too.
The next day (on my birthday) Bruce and Jill went on a bus tour with Julie (Reece’s sister) and Reece and I walked into town to have a look around. We started off at the Rathaus (town hall) but it was raining and miserable so we didn’t actually get that far. I would have liked to visit the spice museum but we were meeting the others for lunch and didn’t really have enough time 🙁 It was our own fault though for sleeping in and being lazy – if we’d left the apartment earlier I’m sure we could have fitted in much more. We found a couple of outdoor shops to look in (we visited these in pretty much every town we stopped in) and laughed at a brand called “Jack Wolfskin”, and also saw a lot of tea shops selling all kinds of tea leaves and associated paraphernalia – seems to be a big thing there.
In front of the Rathous (town hall) in Hamburg
We met up with everyone else for lunch in a rather eclectic restaurant that seemed to have all sorts of cuisine except German, Reece was really disappointed because he wanted traditional sausage and kartoffel salade (potato salad). Then afterwards we caught the train and did a spot of shopping, Reece and I went towards the Reeperbahn (strippers etc. that are restricted to one street, there’s a gate and door with a sign saying females and those under 18 not permitted to enter) so he could get a photo and then we walked back to the apartment through a park and saw an outdoor ice-skating rink. I really don’t feel like we got to see Hamburg at all – we could have done a walking tour but both of us wanted to sleep in so as I mentioned earlier it’s really our own fault we didn’t see much. I got little birthday presents from Reece’s family that I wasn’t expecting, and Reece got me a cool Triumph (motorcycle) top when we were in Lille.
In the evening we had a family birthday dinner, Sam (Reece’s nephew) chose the meal and I chose a chocolate and raspberry cake that we saw in a bakery. The next morning it was up early as everyone else had to catch the train to the airport, then Reece and I cleaned up the apartment and we were on our way. We had a 5-hour drive ahead of us to Lauda, a small town just past Wurzburg and off the main road a bit, which we had just picked off the map without any research.