When we looked at options on what to do for this weekend, we checked out the forecast and it suggested that it might be snowing again. Since we didn't really have much snow and cold weather this winter, we really like the idea of another snow day. So we decided to go somewhere, where the snow actually staying for a few hours seemed more likely than in our hometown.
During a visit to family in Hannover, we decided to take a short trip to Hamburg again, so that we would be able to visit the "Miniatur Wunderland", an enourmous miniature railway exhibition that's said to be the largest in the world, and one of hamburgs main attractions. We hadn't been able to make it there on our visit to Hamburg earlier this year, so this time we specifically planned the trip around our visit to the exhibition.
We had two days in Hamburg, arriving via train in the morning on the first, taking the train back on the evening of the second day.
Upon arrival in Hamburg we took a stroll through the city, walking through the old town, visiting the Jungfernstieg and then making our way through the city to the Speicherstadt. On our way we came by the "Mahnmal St. Nikolai" - the ruins of a church, and a remaining churchtower, now used as a viewing platform, and a museum that tells the story of the WWII Bombings of Hamburg.
The last few years we didn't get much snow in our hometown, which kind of made winter dull and gray. Tim especially is originally from a region in germany, where cold winters with a lot of snow are normal, so we did miss that white stuff.
This winter started off with a surprise: Our first snow fell today! And it didn't melt right away but started piling up, and that's the unusual part. Right now it looks like we have more snow than we'd had at any point in the last three years, the time that we lived here.
We took our cameras on a walk to enjoy the crisp cold day and the fresh snow, before too many people have walked through it, or it melts away.
A few weeks back we took long hike in the Odenwald Region, around the town of Reichelsheim. We've been using "Komoot", an app with maps for hikers and bikers, for a while now, and this was one of the tours the app suggested to us, when we plugged in that we'd like to see some stuff and walk at least two hours.
Reichelsheim is about 40 minutes by car from where we live, but if we could go straight there, it would probably take more like 20. Driving into the Odenwald Regions requires some time though, because the roads are fairly narrow, with lots of curves and just not made to speed.
Last weekend we went for a short trip to Hamburg. We drove there on Saturday morning and back on Saturday evening. The reason for the trip were tickets for a musical, "Ich war noch niemals in New York", we had gotten fairly cheap through a friend*. We would have liked to stay longer, but it just didn't work out. Saturday we mostly spent at the musical, then in the evening in the Schanzenviertel in search for food - we were so hungry we forgot all about taking pictures. We ended up eating at the "Taverna Romana", a restaurant with italian and greek food that is located in the rooms of a former 18th century distillery and wine shop.
We spent the night in a room found via Airbnb in the city quarter Dulsbek. For breakfast we went to Cafe May, a bakery chain in Hamburg. The Wandsbek one was really cute, and thinking about it I am really a bit sad that we forgot to take our cameras. They had different rooms with different furniture and decoration, mostly in a rustic antique style, it was just really nice and the prices were reasonable.
The rest of our time in hamburg we spent looking at the city. First of all we went to the Speicherstadt. Unfortunately the weather wasn't too good, but that part of the city is just stunning with the canals and the red brick buildings. Everything is so uniform and still so different.
We also took a look at the Elbphilarmonie, but it wasn't all to impressive, due to the weather. Afterwards we went to the "Landungsbrücken" and walked through the old Elbtunnel, also called St.Pauli-Elbtunnel. That was actually a cool part, even though I had been sceptical at first. I especiall loved the car-elevators. For anyone visiting that: Do it in the weekends because the tunnel will be closed for motorized traffic on Sundays. The road below is really narrow and I don't like the idea of having to share that with cars. Also the ambiente and I suppose also the noise level is much nicer with no cars around.
Yep, and that's already pretty much it. We went into the old town part of Hamburg at the end of our stay, but due to a triathlon going on, we didn't enjoy that too much. We couldn't reach the things we wanted to see and it was just overcrowded. Oh well, I guess we'll be back some other time.
#sk
*The Musical was OK. It's far from my favorite musical, but I had been really sceptical and it ended up being a lot better than I though. Music-wise at least. The story is...well...VERY shallow.
It's springtime in Darmstadt. Everything is turning green and colorful and the sun is shining. I used the nice weather for a little walk through Darmstadt. I also came by the h_da-Building, which is lovingly called "the cheese grater" by the locals because of it's strange but fascinating facade, which has won some awards in the past.
Since this Blog is called "Adventures", not "travel", we decided we really want to share some more images and information about trips we take around our actual hometown. Those will go by the name of "localtourism", which we'll also use to tag them.
So today's trip went to Bensheim, Germany. A small town in the Region "Bergstraße". We really went there with no expectations at all, because we hadn't even visited the website. We just knew it was there, because we drive by the autobahn signs a lot. So today we finally went. And it ended up being a really nice afternoon.
We walked through the historic town center which is full of "Fachwerkhäuser", I think they're called half-timbered houses, and were stunned by the beautiful inside of St. Georgs Church. While not very spectacular from the outside, the interior was really well designed. Bensheims old town was not as small as expected and a lot prettier that we had thought. There were also quite a few nice little cafés that looked really inviting. Unfortunately, we could only try one ;) It was called "Cafe de Saxe" and they had great self-baked cakes there.
