Speicherstadt ("Warehouse city"), Hamburg

We arrived to Hamburg on train from Lübeck before noon, left our luggage at the hotel and headed to explore the city. We saw Chilehaus and other impressive expressionist brick office buildings from the 1920's and 1930's in the "Kontorhausviertel", before heading to see the Speicherstadt (above), the largest warehouse district in the world, filled with red brick warehouses built on timber-pile foundations next to canals between 1883 and 1927. Another impressive World Heritage Site.

From Speicherstadt we headed towards the new concert hall Elphilharmonie and visited the plaza at 36 meters with some good views to every direction, especially the riverside and the harbour. Next destination was the tower of the St. Nicholas Church, which was destroyed in WW2. We took a glass elevator to the observation deck at 76 meters. Not only were the views great, but the church is a great memorial of the horrors of war (there was also an exhibition about the subject in the crypt). From St. Nicholas we headed to see the impressive town hall and its surroundings. By this time it was certainly time for lunch, which we enjoyed at a restaurant by the Lake Alster.

After lunch we headed for St. Michael's Church. After admiring the inside we took the stairs up to the observation deck at 83 meters, the third observation deck of the day (you can't say I wasn't interested in the views). It wasn't long after I started regretting taking the stairs after the pulled pork burger and the fries, but I made it up there alive and the views were fantastic. We still managed to see the Bismarck Monument and check out the view to St Pauli Piers, but after a fairly hectic day of walking and sightseeing, we decided to head for the hotel for a bit of rest, before finally heading to see wonderful the water-light concert at 9 P.M. in Planten un Blumen park.

In case you didn't care to read all that (can't blame ya), we had a very interesting day with a lot of sightseeing.