Hamburg

Our flight to Hamburg, Germany had a layover in Zurich which, of course, we missed the connection. Air Canada had booked a very tight layover, only one hour, and we were delayed over an hour departing Toronto which meant we were landing in Zurich as our connecting flight was taking off for Hamburg.

Very efficient transfer though. SwissAir had already rebooked us on the next available flight. The layover was now at four hours.

Long day for travelling.

We picked the 25hours Hotel in Hamburg as our base for the four days we would be in this city. Two days prior to embarkation and two days after disembarkation.

Here is a video walkthrough of our funky hotel room:

And a few photos from our first day in Hamburg.

We had no particular itinerary for this day. The plan was to stay awake as long as possible and attempt to readjust our biological clocks to the six hour time zone shift.

The first thing I noticed was the unique architecture of this part of the city.

So many modern office towers and almost all of them built from glass patterns like this one pictured above.

There are numerous canals that extend into Hamburg with wide walkways. Notice the geometric perfection of the new construction? In the new part of Hamburg, most of the architecture featured squares and rectangles.

The older parts of Hamburg also seemed geometric. Predominantly built with brown bricks.

Some of the architecture played with angles and curves like this modern condo tower.

Numerous sidewalk cafes in Hamburg. We had supper at one such cafe. I had my first German Diet Coke: fritz-kola. Ohne Zucker, captioned underneath the fritz-kola brand, means Sugar Free. Lorraine had raspberry iced tea.

The food trucks are definitely a step up from those we find in North America.

A unique home right on the edge of one of the canals.

Proof that Lorraine was in Hamburg. We had great fun trying to figure out what to see in this part of Hamburg. As the map suggested: Was ist wo in der HafenCity?

We had a chance to walk through the St. Nikolai Memorial. This site is Hamburg’s most important memorial for the victims of war between 1933-1945. During the bombing raids on Hamburg, the church tower served allied pilots as a point of orientation. During Operation Gomorrha in 1943, along with the 270,000 homes that were destroyed, the church was hit as well. Approximately 35,000 people were killed at the time. The ruins of the church were blackened by the raging fires although from a distance, the dark areas seem to blend into the main spire which survived the intense bombing raid..

Wonderful streets and cafes to explore in Hamburg.

We managed to stay up until 10pm local time in Hamburg — 4am in Kingston. Sunset in this part of Europe was around 9:30pm which helped us to stay awake.