Ooo Arrr Me Hearties (or Installment 3)

Warning! Photo heavy posts following including excessive use of the Hipstamatic (we've been having lots of fun!)

And so continues the saga of the Smith/Hausmann Summer 2010 travels...

Each time Ted comes, I try to give him a trip to somewhere a bit more special (we have done Berlin, Amsterdam and Cologne previously) so on Saturday we drove north to Hamburg which is a city I have wanted to visit for a long time. 

For those of you who don't know much about it, it's Europe's third largest port and Germany's second city with 1.7 million people. It has more millionaires than anywhere else in Germany and is a very beautiful city even though it was very seriously damaged during the war.

We managed to fit in a lot into our just over 24 hours, taking in 

• a harbour tour which was very impressive with all the seemingly millions of containers, the ship building/repair docks, the newly developed symphony hall area and Speicherstadt
• the Rathaus
• the city centre including all the canals, bridges and pretty corners
• St Nikolai Chuch which is a memorial against war. It was seriously destroyed during the British bombing raids (Operation Gomorra) in 1943 and now you can go to the top of the bell tower and look down at the surviving walls of the church which have been preserved as a reminder
• St Michel's Church 
• a open double decker bus city tour covering all the main sights of the city
• the Reeperbahn which is the infamous party mile and red light area. Suffice to say, Ted's eyes were wide!

The City Hall/Council House (Rathaus) which was really stunning.

The harbour

St Michel's Church

Speicherstadt down in the dock area - these are the largest continuous dock warehouses in the world

St Nikolai Church

One of the local specialties (due to the Reeperbahn, there is a LOT of partying going on there!)

All in all, a great weekend and even though we didn't manage any of the museums, we certainly got a good idea of the top sights of the city. Somewhere to go back to sometime in the future.

One last installment to come...