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Soongies' Great Adventure
It was a wet morning in Berlin when we woke up. We had breakfast and packed up ready for our drive to Hamburg - about a 3 hour journey. Of course we hadn't driven 10 seconds before we stopped to get a yummy breakfast roll each! As has been a trend for us, it rained a lot of the car journey but then the sun came out when we arrived in Hamburg. We stopped off at the supermarket (and Decathlon to return some insoles of course) and then went to Stef's house (Calvin's friend who he volunteered in Northern Ireland who was also at the recent Northern Ireland reunion) where we were staying for the night. Stef had cooked us a yummy pasta lunch with stracciatella mousse for dessert. The 2 of us then braved the Hamburg wind and cold and took the train from Stef's house to the centre of Hamburg. Being a Saturday afternoon, the centre was really busy and full of atmosphere. First stop was Stef's recommendation - we got a Hamburg specialty - a 'Franzbrötchen' - from the train station. It was yummy!! Then, the next stop was Bären-Treff in Altstadt to get Calvin's favourite mango and maracuja gummie lollies. After getting our food, we had to buy some more insoles for Kate and then we walked into the Town Hall which was a beautiful old building. After this we made our way past the war-ruined St. Nicholas church (it wasn't open as the museum section was undergoing renovations) to the harbour through Speicherstadt. Kate's comment was 'there's a lot of brown buildings here' which Calvin said 'they're all old warehouses'. If you can picture old converted warehouses along a harbour, you can picture where we were. It was recently made a UNESCO heritage site and it was a nice area to walk around in bridges over canals among tall brown and red gothic buildings. It was fairly windy at the harbour - the biggest harbour in Germany and 2nd biggest in Europe - but we walked along the promenade to see the boats and ships along the Elbe river. As we were pretty cold, we stopped at a cafe near the Elbphilharmonie (a controversial building due to its cost and planning) to get a hot drink and then decided it was time for dinner. After a brisk half hour walk in the cold we arrived at Quan Do - the top Asian cheap eat restaurant in Hamburg! We had lychee lemonade and then Bun Bo and Bun Nems. We then wandered over to the big shopping centre Europa and used their wifi to do a bit more Iceland / USA planning before heading back to Stef's on the train. Sandra, Stef's friend was over for the evening as they had planned to go out dancing that night. While they partied on, we stayed at home and blogged and slept. Kate did awake to the sound of the doorbell buzzing around 1:30 am - Sandra and Stef had forgotten the keys! Fortunately Kate woke up (Calvin didn't!) and was able to let them in!
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