Hamburg

I'm not going to lie. This was not my favorite city. It started with an odd taxi ride (he wanted to know the exact address of my hotel, I didn't have it, and then he took me straight there...? I was a little confused) and then an odd tour of the city. I was glad that my hotel wouldn't let me check in right away since it meant I had to go ahead and do my sightseeing. And because I only had a day there, that was a good thing.

I took the bus back to the train station, spent WAY too long trying to figure out the metro and tickets. BTW, if you ever go to Germany, the metro does "require" tickets but no one ever asked to see mine, there were no machines to go through, and they just seemed sort of pointless. In fact I never actually got metro tickets in Cologne, at first because there was no ticket machine at the station nearest my hotel (despite what they said) and then because I never needed one.

Back to Hamburg! Anyway, I wanted to see Beatlesplatz so I took the metro to the nearest station and walked...straight through the red light district (and no, I did not take pictures). I had looked like the RLD was separated from a major street but was not only parallel to that street, but kind of overlapped it. I was a little confused for awhile. But I finally got to Beatlesplatz. I took a few pictures and then had to walk back to the metro. Thankfully it was the middle of the afternoon so nothing too shady was going on. Still made me a little uncomfortable and disinclined to linger.

I then took the metro to the Radhaus. That's what the Germans (and other Germanic languages) call City Hall. And despite it being a pretty big building, I couldn't find it. And I looked. *sigh* I wandered for awhile, my map clutched in my hands.

I finally found a sign that also listed the Chilehaus, another sight I wanted to see. I went there first. What a disappointment. My guidebook described it as "shaped like an ocean liner, with remarkable curved walls meeting in the shape of a ship's bow and staggered balconies to look like decks." I was underwhelmed. Maybe I needed to walk around it a bit, but I was getting pretty frustrated so I went to the Radhaus.

After finally finding it (!) I was pleased. This is the kind of architecture I get really into as a tourist. It's so ornate and you know it took years to get it looking like this. It makes you think of politicians in white wigs debating tax law. I liked it. And since the Alsterarkaden was just across the canal, I went over there for a few minutes. Again, I was underwhelmed.

So I went back to the train station to catch the bus back to my hotel. After about half an hour of walking around very confused, I finally found the stop I needed.

I was happy to be moving on the next day. As far as I'm concerned, Hamburg was only alright.

And just, btw, the bottled water that I got with dinner was absolutely disgusting. It tasted acidic. :P No, Hamburg was not my favorite.