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Published: October 3rd 2007
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We were already docked at the Hamburg cruise ship terminal when we woke up. It was another beautiful, sunny day, but cooler in the upper 50’s. Billy and I stopped up at the Windjammer Café for breakfast, where Susanna trapped his thumbs under a full glass of orange juice, so she could feed him.
We hopped on the $5.00 USD cruise ship shuttle that dropped us off in front of the main town square. Our intent was to catch the double-decker bus tour in English, to tour the city. However, we found out that out of the bus tours that run every minutes, only one out of four were in English. By the time the English speaking tour bus reached us, it was too full to take on any other passengers.
Luckily, there was a food, beer and wine festival going on in the town square. We spent some time there drinking the special Bittburger Bier and warming ourselves under the heat lamps. Tom and I walked over to the Canal tour office and secured tickets for our group on the 3:00 PM boat tour. We made a pit stop at the restrooms, located underground at the Metro. While
there are pay toilets all over Europe, leave it to German ingenuity to develop the pay turnstile toilet. The group split up for a couple of hours to do their own thing. Billy and I fed the swans and visited the post office to mail some postcards. We were also fortunate to see a local parade along the main street that celebrated the multi-cultural residents of Hamburg.
At 2:30 PM, our group reconvened for our lake and canal tour trip. Hamburg is a beautiful city of canals and parks that is best appreciated from the water. We enjoyed the scenic sights along the way, but the taped commentary in English was severely lacking. The boat captain provides what appeared to be a very funny and lengthy commentary in German, based on the reaction of the German tourists along for the ride.
After our boat cruise, it was about a 15 minute walk to Groninger’s Bier Cellar. We were looking forward to this all day. The cellar doesn’t open until 5:00 PM. We didn’t have reservations, but the host found us a table we could use until 8:15 PM. It was only 5:30 PM and the place was already
packed.
Groninger’s is a series of cellar rooms that stretch underneath the buildings for an entire block. It is deceiving from the outside, since it appears to only be a small brick rowhouse. Our host led us through at least 6 separate rooms, to a typical bier hall style table—thick wood with picnic style benches.
There was a lot of raucous laughter going on from the numerous other groups. We wasted no time in joining them. The beer here is microbrewed on sight and provides a choice of light or dark beer. We opted for liters of dark beer all around accompanied by Groninger’s famous food platter, filled with pork slices, ribs, sausages and radishes. There also was a strolling musician who had everyone singing and swaying arm and arm. It must be Oktoberfest here, all year long !! We were doubly blessed, when our dear friend Carlos arrived to share some good beer and food with us, during his break from tending bar on the ship.
Unfortunately, 8:15 PM arrived much too soon and we had to vacate our table. We said our goodbyes to our friendly, efficient wait staff, and left in search of an
Groningers
Good Beer, Good Food, Great Friends open bar enroute back to the town square. However, this was not an easy task, since we were in the heart of the business district that seems to roll up its sidewalks at 6 P.M. We were all but ready to give up, when we saw a bunch of guys going into a bar named Willi's. We quickly followed them in and ordered a round of Bittburgers. The locals were very friendly and we had a great time. It wasn’t until after we were there a while, that we realized it was a gay bar. We laughed uncontrollably, when we exited the bar and now noticed the huge rainbow flag and rainbow colored lights around the front window.
We worked our way back to the cruise ship shuttle bus and had everyone laughing on the bus as Danny regaled them with the story of our gay bar adventure. We spent the rest of the night up at the Vortex with Pavlin and the bar staff until the wee hours, since the next day is a sea day.
Sailing out of Hamburg at 2:00 A.M. was quite interesting, since we had quite a way to sail up the river
in order to reach the sea. There were a lot of large tankers passing us close-by, lit up like Christmas trees.
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