The task of getting to Hamburg was initially hindered by the announcement of all London trains to Heathrow Airport being cancelled. Panic! Frantic iPhone button pressing! Luckily, it turned out that this didn’t include the tube, so I jumped on the Piccadilly line and rode all the way to the end – the infamous Terminal 5.
We started off with a free Hamburg city tour from Sandemans New Europe. I’ve been on their tours a few times before, and their guides are always good fun with great location knowledge. Our guide Irene today certainly didn’t disappoint.
We started off with the stunning town hall. It resembles the typical European architecture seen in important buildings across the continent.
First church stop of the day was St. Petri, the oldest church in Hamburg, which dates back to 1195. It burned down in the Great Fire of 1842 which engulfed most of the city, but the site still holds artwork dating back to the 1300s.
We visited the St. Nikolai Church which is for the patron saint of water. Fitting for Hamburg in many ways.
We saw some beautiful views of the port around the Speicherstadt (historic warehouse area) and the Binnenhafen (inner harbour area).
We also took a closer look at the new opera house, which has swallowed millions of Euros from Hamburg’s taxpayers and is more than five years behind schedule for completion. The city’s residents are not happy. Tourists can enjoy a guided tour of the construction site though, so at least it’s helping Hamburg tourism to boom.
Undoubtedly one of Hamburg’s best known offerings, my trip to this part of Germany would not have been complete without seeing the infamous Reeperbahn – Hamburg’s red-light district street in St Pauli. We went at 2:30am on a Saturday night, which apparently is the time to go. I have to say that I found the whole setup a lot more civilised than Amsterdam’s equivalent.
We visited Hamburg’s Kaffeemuseum Burg (Museum of Coffee). The first thing to note about this place is its extraordinary smell. The scent of roasting beans will fill your nostrils from a good few hundred metres away as you approach the building, and if you’re anything like me, that’s a very welcome prospect indeed.
