Adventures

Hello again, Hamburg!

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.

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Day 6 - Hue and a bus ride to Phong Nha

We only had half a day in Hue because of the additional Day in Hoi An. The Bus we had booked with Hung Than Travel was scheduled to start to Phong Nha at 4:30 pm. That meant we had to skip all the Kings Graves and sights further out of the city, and instead just took a look at the citadel, which was within walking distance. That way we also got a short look on the city of Hue by daylight before we had to take off again.

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Day 3 - Visiting Hội An

Since our Homestay was located a few minutes outside of Hoi An, we used the free bicycles provided to get into and around the city of Hoi An, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The bike ride took about 10 minutes, leading through rice fields until we got to the city, there we continued on to the old town, located down by the river.

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Day 2 - Strolling through HCMC and moving on to Hoi An

On our second, and last, day in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), we were on our own for further exploring. We decided to just stroll around the city and take in as much of it as we could before we would have to catch our flight to Hoi An in the evening. First we just randomly walked through the area where our hotel was located, watching people live their everyday lives. Or sleep on their motorbikes. And watched the crazy traffic. There's just so much to take in.

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Day 1 - Getting to know Ho Chi Minh City from the rear seat of a motorbike

Beware: this is going to be a long post. We also had a million pictures we wanted to share and quite some trouble blogging because we didn't take a laptop with us - but here's what we came up with.

Before we left Germany, we looked for a guide to HCMC via Couchsurfing, so we wouldn't be too lost in this big city and foreign culture. We got in contact with Cuong, who agreed to show us the city and (very important to me!) introduce us to the local food. We could definitely not have found a better guide. We were picked up at our hotel by Cuong and his wife on their motorbikes (I guess I would call them Scooters, if I was in Germany, but here it’s used for both) and then had a glorious day exploring HCMC.

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Mathildenhöhe Darmstadt

While we started the blog mainly to show some pictures of our travles, we've since realized that it's not only nice and beautiful abroad, but also at home. When we first moved here, we weren't too fond of the particular region we live in now, but we've started to find many places here that are actually really beautiful and/or special. And some of those places we are aware that we'd be visiting those if located in a city somewhere in one of our trips. One of the more obvious ones is the "Mathildenhöhe Darmstadt", the cities best known attraction. The "Hochzeitsturm" is also Darmstadts most iconic sight and used in many logos centered around the city.

The "Mathildenhöhe" used to be an artists colony for Jugenstil (Art Nouveau) artists, and the buildings there are mostly from that era. That's why Darmstadt is sometimes referred to as Germany's capital of Art Nouveau.

The plantain grove predates the artists colony but was stocked with sculptures during the artists exhibitons. There is also a russian chapel that was built well before the founding of the artists colony, but has been included into the overall planning. Right before it sits the "Lilienbecken", a pool with a mosaic depicting Lilies. They view from the "Lilienbecken" up to the russian chapel and the Hochzeitsturm is probably the most photographed motive in Darmstadt, but I haven't yet been able to capture a good picture of that.

Darmstadt is currently in the application process to make the Mathildenhöhe a UNESCO World Heritage Site – there's some information on that on their website.

You might have be able to notice that not all of those pictures were taking in one sitting.We've been to the Mathildenhöhe quite a few times, so the pictures are a bit mixed up. To be honest about that part of Darmstadt – at first I didn't really like the place too much, I'm not that big of a fan of art nouveau, but it really depends on the time of the year and day. I think the best time to visit is in the springtime or early summer, when everything is green, in the late afternoon. Around 5-ish or something. Then it can be really stunning.

Currently there's construction going on on the central Exhibition Building, and a big part of it is wrapped in framework and tarps, I think they won't be done until 2018. So if you plan on going there you probably won't be able to see it in its full glory until then.

All pictures of interesting places in Darmstadt can be found in the corresponding album.

Stockholm

Stockholm is only a one hour train ride away from Uppsala, so we spent one day visiting there. It is a city spread across several islands, with a beautiful old town district and many other things to see. One day really isn't enough to explore everything, but this will still be a long post with many photos. I didn't include all of them, so if you want to see more or want to skip the text and just look at the pictures, you can find them all here.

Once again we were incredibly lucky with the weather – it was a beautiful spring day, warm and sunny, and the flowers and trees now started blooming everywhere.

We started the day by visiting Skansen. Skansen is a open-air museum showcasing building from different regions and time periods of Sweden.

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Uppsala

We used the Monday after Valborg to explore Uppsala. We were really lucky with the weather, because the sun was shining brightly and it was warm enough to even take of the jacket and enjoy the sun. While the trees had been mostly bare when we arrived we could now see the buds on the trees. Spring really had arrived with Valborg.

First of all we went to see the Domkyrkan, Uppsala's Cathedral.

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