Its Hammer(burg) time with a splash of Cologne!

We had a bit of the winter blues so we booked ourselves a long weekend in Northern Germany - Hamburg and Cologne to be precise. A quick hour long flight from Gatwick was the start of the trip. As expected the German efficiency was a welcome change from a lot of our trips, we navigated from the airport to out hotel pretty easily and crashed in a super comfy bed.

Saturday 28th Feb
Saturday morning started off sunny, and only got better. We opted to have the hotel breakfast which was delish, pumpernickel, fruit, jams...the works. We set out to explore shortly after, headed towards the harbour area (about 35 mins walk away). The city itself is relatively small, with a big focus on integrating the historic port buildings and huge warehouses with modern architecture. Everything looked like it had been re done in the last 20 years. The warehouse district was really cool, massive brick buildings based around all the little canals which used to be used for transporting goods. We reached the docks where the cruises left from and jumped on a harbour cruise albeit in German as we were visiting outside "tourist season". It turned into a pearler of a day and we saw a great view of the city from the water as well of loads of container ships and huge cranes in the port.
 

Post cruise we headed into the old town for a look at St. Michael's church, this had an awesome statue of Micheal at the front, and another great view from the top of the church steeple which we climbed. We also popped round the corner to see the Bismarck monument, a weird mix of graffiti and old school communist style. We were hungry by now, and fell into the trap of always thinking there was somewhere better/cheaper round the corner. So we ended up in a mall food court for some take away salads.

Cold and a bit tired from our busy week, we walked back to our hotel for a kip before sprucing up and going out for dinner. Lou and her trusty trip advisor found a place not too far away that had good meals, cheap beer and an English menu....harder to find than you would think. It was a great pub atmosphere, and Hamish didn't waste any time in ordering a stein...Our meals were enormous, all the usual fare, spuds, cabbage, sauerkraut etc. we even ended up getting a free round of drinks which was great.

So now we were off to explore the red light district of Hamburg, it was everything that you would expect. Loads of hens and stag dos, and weird sex shops. Then Hamish thought it would be a good idea to take his wife on a shortcut through the back streets close to midnight....we realised that this wasn't a good idea when there was one menacing looking black guy in every single street corner, just standing guard over their patch. We kept our heads down and walked bloody quickly! Exhausted by the time we got back, we treated our lucky escape with a hot chocolate at the Hotel bar and hit the hay.
 
Highlights: the architecture, the sun and the meal out were highlights
Lowlights: too much walking on day one...31,000 steps on the fit bit!
Interesting fact: The Beatles kicked off their European fame in Hamburg, and there are loads of souvenirs to remind you of this fact.
 
Sunday 1st March
While we were desperate for a sleep in, we couldn't today because we were off to join the hoardes of people for breakfast at the famous Sunday fish market. We quickly packed and checked out and got the right train (eventually after a few false starts). The market was crazy, loads of people buying fresh fish, veges and knick-knacks, and munching on these marinated pickled herring fillet sandwiches with raw onion for breaky. A very weird thing to have for breakfast, especially when you a a bit hungover....
But when in Rome...so we did as the locals did, we also tried these fish skewers which were amazing, the fish was so fresh. We finally ended up at the actual market building which resembled a beer hall with loads of tables set out, a band playing and people getting stuck into their pints (at 9.30am). They say that people that party all night come here for a breakfast and wind down, and you could see a few worse for wear people.
 

Once we had absorbed that we shook off the fishy smell and wandered back to the town square where Lou had found a free walking tour. It was a pretty decent tour that took us around some of the quirky sights we had missed as well as giving a background of history of Hamburg.
The city was completely destroyed in World War Two, with 1.7million bombs dropped on the city in a few weeks. That's why all the buildings look so new.
The tour finished about 2pm and we were in need of a hot meal. We stumbled upon a Hofbrau House which was a massive blessing. It was warm, comfy and served beer and pork knuckle. Hamish couldn't contain himself.We spent a good couple of hours here defrosting and filling our bellies, before getting our bags and hopping on a train to our next destination....Cologne.

Highlight: Dancing along to "pretty woman" with a hundred drunk people at 9am
Lowlight: no sleep in and the rain
Interesting fact: There are more millionaires in Hamburg than anywhere else in Germany.
 
Cologne - Monday 2nd March
We arrived in Cologne just after 10pm and found our hotel pretty quickly. Unfortunately the budget didn't stretch as far this time so it was pretty crap. We hit the hay and enjoyed a sleep in.
 
Breakfast was pretty average, and it wasn't long before we out in the cold again. Cologne is a beautiful little city, dominated by the cathedral which is where we headed first. It was massive, and seemed to just pop out of the ground straight up. Building began in 1248, but it took about 200 years for it to resemble what it looks like now. It wasn't directly targeted in World War Two so amazingly it remained standing while the rest of the city was flattened.
Another amazing sight was the padlock bridge, where couples write on a padlock and then clip it to the railway bridge as a symbol of their "unbreakable" love. There are an estimated 40,000 padlocks on the bridge adding 2 tonnes of weight....engineers are not happy.
 

After the cathedral we checked out the view from one of the tallest buildings in cologne, it was only ten stories as no building is allowed to be taller than the cathedral.

 

We then wandered around the shops and popped into the Fragrance museum although it was a pretty small museum. Believe it or not, cologne was actually invented in Cologne, as a specific fragrance but now the word has come to represent all men's smellies.
 
We had lunch at a little local cafe, before heading back to the hotel to get our togs....yes that's right, we went swimming....in a thermal spa though. We joined all the oldies and unemployed people for the afternoon session at the thermal baths which was really nice considering how cold it was.
We then treated ourselves to some drinks and nibbles before getting some local schnitzel at a close by pub.
 
Highlight: The pools were a nice different thing to on holiday.
Lowlight: Hotel was pretty bad
Interesting fact: Kolsch is the local beer in cologne and it's served in 200ml glasses only. Don't know why, it just is!
 
Tuesday 3rd March
A big sleep in and a leisurely breakfast before wandering around the shops and along the river. We came across a chocolate museum which looked alright so we popped on, it was actually a working factory for Lindt, so we saw all the stages that chocolate goes through, it was quite interesting and it smelled awesome.

Soon enough it was time to head to the airport and fly back to London. A really nice break in a part of Germany that we hadn't seen before.
 
Highlight: Smelling chocolate for about 2 hours
Lowlight: Not eating any chocolate....
Interesting fact: M & Ms were invented as a way for American soldiers to enjoy chocolate without it melting.