Back to HamburgOct 13, 2006
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Hamburg docks - cranes in the background
The only decent photo opportunity on our Harbor Tour
| Day 1, Back to Hamburg: In order to break up the long train ride from Denmark to Belgium, we decided to return to Hamburg for one night. We got lucky and were greeted by a beautiful sunny day upon our return. We did our best to capitalize on the nice weather and spent most of the afternoon exploring the city. We had read in our guidebook that no visit to Hamburg was complete without a boat tour through the city's numerous canals, so we set off to find a boat tour. Well, we got the boat tour part right, but saw no canals. We got caught up in all the confusion and masses of people at the boat docks, and managed to join the wrong boat tour. Instead of the "canal" tour, we purchased tickets to the "harbor" tour. This doesn't sound so bad, except that Hamburg is a huge port town with barges and tankers coming and going every few minutes. Our "harbor" tour ended up being a one hour tour of the giant tankers, cranes, docking stations, and pipelines that make up this most industrial of ports. It was beautiful!! We notched it up to experience and quickly moved on. We spent the rest of the afternoon exploring several of the Hamburg neighborhoods, including St. Pauli, which was once upon a time the world's most famous red light district and today houses an interesting mix of bars, restaurants, and shops (it wasn't unusual to see a trendy bar sandwiched between a McDonald's and a porn shop). Best of all, the beers in the St. Pauli restaurants were reasonably priced...which was nice after having spent non-trivial coin in Copenhagen. |
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