Hamburg, Germany

On Tuesday morning I snuck out early and went on a run here in Wilhelmsburg, just outside of Hamburg.  It was a nice day, and it felt great to go running after a few days without.  I really love running in new cities; it’s a great way to see lots of the surrounding scenery.  Wilhemsburg is a cute little quiet town, that’s actually on an island.  Hamburg is the biggest port city in Germany, so there is tons of water everywhere.  Unlike San Francisco, it comes from a river rather than being on the coastline.  I ran and saw some quaint houses, lots of green fields, and even an awesome looking windmill. 

Once I got back and we were organized, we grabbed a cinnamon roll type pastry (delicious!!!) that Katinka recommended, caught the bus and then the metro into the town center.  Hamburg, unlike Amsterdam, is very industrial.  There is lots of history, but it’s much more heterogeneous than what we saw in Amsterdam… one block is full of business building and cargo boxes, and then next there are these gorgeous little town squares and 500 year old churches. 

 

City Hall

We walked down the main avenue, saw city hall, and were loving all the hidden tall ship emblems.  Some were engraved into the side of old buildings, others were gold statues at the top of polls.  Thankfully the downtown area wasn’t too expansive, so we were able to walk for most of the day (even though we did have unlimited metro passes).  We didn’t have much of an agenda and decided to make it a low-key day and just enjoy wandering and seeing what we found. 

Cool Tall Ships!

We made our way towards St. Michael’s Church and visited both the top tower and the crypts underneath the church.  The views from the top tower (after climbing 450+ stairs) was breathtaking and gave us some ideas of more places were wanted to visit.  The crypt was super cool, and we learned that lots of people were buried under the church. There was a high demand for this type of burial, and it also raised money for the church.  What we also learned was that the graves were made to be very deep so that 3-5 coffins could be stacked on top of one another to maximize the limited space.  Kinda creepy…

 

St. Michael's Church

 

After our visit, we wandered in the direction of the historic square we saw from the church tower.  It’s a square where all the houses are conserved from wher they were first built.  It was super cute and there were no tourists, which was nice.  We then kept wandering, saw part of the port, skipped the fish market (Kristin’s allergic), and found a place to eat.  Since neither of us speaks German, we usually just pick the place that has an English menu.  We quickly found out that we had picked an all-potato restaurant… every dish was made with potatoes.  We were so full after just a few rich bites we had to try to communicate to the lady that, yes the food was delicious, but that there was too much of it! She was concerned at first, but she packed it up for us to bring home.

We continued walking, window-shopped, and picked up some lettuce and veggies for dinner that night.  Katinka was great and let us use the kitchen and everything, so once we got home, we reheated our leftover pizza, made a huge green salad, and drank the bottle of champagne I was given by some of the doctors at the hospital.  I couldn’t keep it one more day in my suitcase… it was just too heavy to drag around. Only solution: drink it :) We packed up our stuff, and prepared for another day of traveling towards our next stop: Prague!