Days 8 & 9 in Germany – Sunny Hamburg

Kyra relaxing at a beach cafe

It's the middle of our trip, and we're drooping a bit. I skipped a day of blogging because I went to bed when we got home last night instead of writing about our day, and then I slept in this morning too. We are kind of drifting along in the middle of our trip, enjoying Britta's company, and enjoying the sunshine and beautiful weather, which is a happy change from the weeks of dreary cold rain they'd been having in Hamburg.

Britta took us to all of her favorite haunts, downtown, at the docks, in the Portuguese enclave, around a lake, and gave us a running travelogue as we went, one of the advantages to knowing geographers. We took a boat up the Elbe, to see the container port, which was pretty fascinating. We watched ships being loaded and unloaded by robotic cranes, and enormous ships being tugged out of the dock and sent on their way to the sea.

The Hamburg port

We spent a leisurely hour on the beach, lounging in deck chairs at a beach café – right on the Elbe, across from the docks. We rode the ferris wheel and drank BubbleTea at the carnival near her place. We spent some time in her apartment with our feet up, enjoying the view and cold drinks, and caught a cool water and light show in the park last night.

At the carnival

Today we went to the world's largest model train exhibit, and it was incredible. It's so large that they have divided the exhibit into countries. In Switzerland, there's a miniature Matterhorn, with a moving tram to take skiers up the mountain. In Austria there's an airport with model planes that actually taxi, land and take off. In the Hamburg area, you can see the building that houses the model train exhibit we were in, and when you peak in the tiny windows, you can see an even tinier model train exhibit. It's kind of like a diorama of model train infinity.

After a week in Germany, I am in better shape than I have been in years, despite the fact that we've been eating ice cream every day. (Kyra's idea.) It's been like a week on a medieval stone stairmaster. Everywhere we go we are walking up and down stairs. Yesterday we decided to climb to the top of the tower of Michaeliskirche (St. Michael's church) to look out over Hamburg, and Kyra objected. There was an elevator, and she wanted to take it. But first we had to climb three flights of stairs to get to it.

Kristin and Britta

Tomorrow we head to Berlin, the last stop on our trip. We won't be sorry to leave our hotel, which has the worst coffee I've ever tried – so bad that we actually went without caffeine this morning rather than drink it. It has a laundry room with a washer and dryer, which was nice, because we wanted to clean a few things before we packed. But when we went to check it out, we saw that it had only a washing machine, and that what they called a dryer was actually a wooden rack where you can hang your wet clothes. So we washed a few things out in the sink, and we're hoping for better luck in hotels when we get to Berlin.