First day in Hamburg

....and exhausted. We came home about 4.30 and slept.
Most of the day we’d spent in doing the hop on hop off thing on one of the double-decker buses that tour around Hamburg city. They take about an hour and a half to do this, and we got off twice. The bus we’d started out on was the 100, but the one we went back onto was the 200, and it takes a somewhat different route - in fact we wound up going over much of the route we’d already taken but approaching it from the opposite direction. Finally, somewhat desperate that we were never going to get back to point A, we got off in Rathaus Square (Rathaus is just the Town Hall - I suppose the ‘rat’ part has some links with ratification), and walked back along Monckebergerstrasse to the Hauptbahnhof - the main railway station - which is just near the hotel.
Doesn’t sound like an exhausting day, you say?
Well, our first hop off was at St Michael’s Church, and instead of going into the church proper, as we’d thought, we found ourselves climbing up the tower. At least 25 flights of stairs, if not more. By the time we’d got to the point where we’d both have preferred to have given up, we thought we might as well carry on. Certainly the view from the tower was amazing, but it took a while to get the breath back. We got the lift back down (yup, this is a church with a lift to the tower), and none of the passengers had quite figured out, when we got to the bottom, how to get the door to open. So we all went up to the top of the tower again, before coming down.
After this we finally got into the church itself, and it’s an amazing building. Wonderful curves everywhere to offset the usual straight lines of the architecture. It’s been thoroughly restored, so all the golds and whites are as they would have been. It just glistens. And because it’s Harvest Festival (here as in England) the church was full of decorations related to food: wreaths made of vegetables and stalks hanging from the balcony; breads in all sorts of shapes (such as a mouse and a snake); an enormous canopy affair hanging in the sanctuary made out of corn sheaves, and various statements such as Our Father (in German, of course) made out of bread on a baked backing.
Hamburg is an extensive city, with a large port and waterfront. We went past areas with houses that are worth several million euros - wonderful places on the street that’s closest to the large lake that’s within the city. There are embassies everywhere, and of course these are all large and imposing - and no doubt costing their home country a large amount of money. The buildings vary in their materials, but there are many that are made out of bricks, vast structures rising way above the street. The whole place has a very permanent air about it, an air of having survived a cluttered history. It’s going full steam ahead at present: there are acres of building going on, both office space and apartments, down by the water.
It was a holiday today (not sure what holiday) and the crowds were out in full force, but most of the shops were shut. Restaurants were doing an enormous trade. We went into the railway station first thing this morning to get our Eurail pass sorted out. We were hoping that they actually knew what it was all about, and of course they did. We’ve booked ourselves a couple of seats to Cologne for tomorrow - booked seats because of the holiday today, which apparently might affect tomorrow‘s travellers.
The railway station is large, as you’d expect, full of shops. There’s one area that’s given over to food shops, all within a kind of mall. You just wander from one food group to another. And there are plenty of other shops - including the ubiquitous McDonald’s where we went and had a milkshake (again) tonight, and watched while a couple of teenagers spent almost all the time we were there in a long, long kiss. A long kiss.
There was also a kind of large mini-market (if that makes sense) and Celia was in her element. I’ve come to the conclusion that English or Continental supermarkets are a kind of art gallery or museum to her. When I proposed this new theory, she smiled enigmatically.

Wir sind in Hamburg

Today was a day of chunks of travel. Two hours from Attleborough to Stansted Airport, by bus, with the weather becoming increasingly overcast (and the toilet on the bus, which we’d chosen to sit beside, giving off incredibly unpleasant whiffs every so often). The obligatory two hours at Stansted waiting for the flight to take off (decreased somewhat by the fact that we were late getting there, and there were queues for everything (but for some reason we were given priority tickets so that helped to get us on board a bit faster). They took my laptop off in the security area, and gave it a looking-over. Poor Alphonse! - the laptop - he was appalled to be considered a security risk. But at least we didn’t have to take off our shoes. Not sure what they’re expecting to find in shoes.
An hour and a half on the plane (virtually) with the usual Ryanair minimalist approach to service - not enough coin change when you bought something, no sick bags, no string bags on the backs of the seats to put your magazine in, no room to spread out in any direction.
And then an hour and a quarter or so from Lubeck airport into Hamburg city, again by bus - a very quiet bus, it must be said, so quiet that you weren‘t really aware of the speed you were doing.
And into Hamburg BusPort. Which is only a little way from our hotel. We had to go to the Hotel Keiler Hof to pick up our key from a very grumpy receptionist. She was friendly really, just liked to do the grumpy thing. The reception desk was on the first floor - I have no idea what was on the ground floor, but it wasn’t part of the hotel. And then we had to take our three keys to the building next door, Luebecker Hof, use the large key to open the building door, go up to the first floor again, use the blue key to open the door to that floor, and then use the third key for our room. I thought our room number was 213 until I realised that the label actually read Zi3 - or zimmer 3. (Zimmer being ‘room’.)
The room is quite large, with a private shower. The shower isn’t exactly en suite, as it’s in the room itself, next to the wardrobe. The toilet is across the hall, and serves all the people staying in rooms 2-6. (Room 1 seems to have vanished). We’re going to have our breakfasts in the Keiler Hof. On the first floor. This idea of having hotels on the first floors and upwards seems to be a European thing. It was the same in both the hotels I stayed in, in Rome. The ground floor is usually occupied by some other business altogether.
After settling ourselves in we went out again to get something to eat - it now being around 9 pm. Found a kebap place around the corner (yup, kebap), and had a very nice meal in the open air. It's been a very warm day in general. The area we're in seems a bit less than salubrious - ladies of the night are very visible, as is the sex sho (not sure whether it's meant to be shop or show) just around the corner.