The Brighton Jotter

"Instructions for living a life: Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it." – Mary Oliver

Hamburg – Sun 19th Nov

The tower shows the time and tide

Today I’d booked two tours with Experience Hamburg Tours. We started a 6:30am for the Sankt Pauli Fishmarket Tour. We walked down the banks of the river learning about Hamburg’s Maritime history stopping at various sights along the way until we got to the fish market. This runs from 7am-11am over the winter months. The wholesale market has now moved so this is now just retail sales. There is a variety of food available including fish rolls. I could not stomach that this early in the morning but we had a Franzbrötchen, a type of pastry, a bit like a failed croissant with cinnamon sugar. There are also the screamers who put on quite a show enticing the people passing to grab a plastic bag and fill it with their wares. These will be what has come into the port but can’t be sold to the main supermarkets (they might be close to use by etc). After the tour we warmed up in a cafe for breakfast and wandered some more.

The container port
The Elbe tunnel. Built so workers could travel to the port on the other side of the Elbe.
The Fish Market
Screamers with fresh produce
These buildings were supposed to be knocked down but squatters took them over to prevent that happening
You enter the Elbe tunnel here, travelling down in big lifts
Breakfast in the Portuguese quarter
The tide is shown under the clock. Black means it’s above 0, red is lower than 0.

After breakfast we went on a Harbour cruise. I stayed inside, so no great photos. It was a bit cold and windy … and then rainy. Afterwards E wanted to see the Soviet U-boat museum so we went to that. I can’t believe how tight the quarters are. The beds are too short for me to sleep comfortably and I’m not very tall.

Cap San Diego moored in Hamburg, it has events rooms, a hotel, museum and even escape rooms.
Climbing through this was no joke
The beds were ridiculously short

After all this we only had a short time back in apartment, resting up before our late afternoon tour around the old town and warehouse district. We started near the town hall and learnt more about Hamburgs history as we walked through the town. we finished in the Speicherstadt, the UNESCO world heritage listed warehouse district.

Alster Arcades decked out for Christmas.
The Rathaus (Town Hall) doesn’t know what style to be so goes with them all
Hamburg Coat of Arms
Spite of St Nikolai Church remained standing after the allied fire bombing of Hamburg in WWII. It’s now a memorial.
The warehouse district. Set up to be the only place to keep Hamburg’s tax-free status when it joined the Prussian Empire.

Our tour guide gave us some recommendations for dinner and we ended up in a whisky bar, Whiskyplaza & Altstadt Restaurant am Fleet. I had some yummy mulled wine and an excellent fish dish.

Comments

4 responses to “Hamburg – Sun 19th Nov”

  1. J Avatar
    J

    Gosh, you sure are seeing a lot on this trip! Hamburg looks beautiful, and the neon bathroom sign is hilarious.

  2. Elisabeth Avatar
    Elisabeth

    I’ve never seen a tide clock that how – how fascinating.

  3. Jenny Avatar
    Jenny

    I’ve fallen behind on my blog reading, but I had to go back and read this post to see what you did in Hamburg! i mentioned that I spent quite a bit of time in Hamburg, and found it to be a pretty but kind of boring city (at least, compared to other big cities in Germany like Berlin and Munich.) i probably should have tried harder- the things you did sound really interesting!

  4. San Avatar
    San

    Oh, you had Franzbrötchen – truly a Northern German thing (you won’t get them where I grew up). I have a recipe and would like to try to make them myself sometime.