Day 26: The Last Full Day :(

Noooo! Our last full day of our trip :(

Says it all!

We headed out to the nearest cafe to our hotel for breakfast, and it turned out to be quite a hipster place. Cafe Johanna was a small hole in the wall, with only a few tables inside. The menu was mostly vegan and vego, but their coffee was pretty good. Addy opted to get the vego museli and fruit, and I got a panini with sun dried tomato and pesto. Turns out vegan brekkies are filling, and Addy got defeated by all the fruit and nuts in it, so I helped finish it off for her while my panini was a bit delayed. It was a pretty trendy place and it filled up once we arrived.

Addys' healthy bowl

Wanting to make the most of our day, we planned to go to the Hamburg Museum to learn more about the city, check out an ice rink on our way to Planten und Blumen, before going back through town and back out to the docks. Hamburg has a ring road which we had originally planned to follow the previous day but hadn't made it through; today we'd go the other way, in a sense.

The Hamburg Museum was only a few blocks away so after breakfast we were soon there. The Museum is built into an old building, and to be straight with you, it was probably the worst museum we'd been to on the trip. There are many different exhibits about Hamburg's history but there was no coherence or chronology between them. Addy and I thought we'd gone in the wrong place to start, but nope, it drops you in the 20th century and works you backwards throughout the century, before you get to medieval hamburg. Most of the information was dry and a fair amount was only in German (fair enough I guess). That said, we still learnt about the history of the area, it was just a jarring experience.

We passed a huge statue of Bismark

The museum had a lot of model ships

There was an exhibit on Judaism and Jews in Hamburg on the next floor but again, no real point to it. It didn't tie into WWII much (if at all), especially considering how much of Jewish history was removed during the war. Worse to come, there was meant to be another Miniature Railway on the top floor.

Unlike Miniatur Wonderland we'd been to the day before, this model railway only ran every few hours, and was much smaller in size than the other one. The model was a selling point and I believe that before Miniatur Wonderland came along, this place kept the model crown in Hamburg before it got out done.

Bleh. After that we left the Museum and started to walk through the park adjoining the museum. There is a string of parks next to the ring road called Planten un Blumen which have a lovely assortment of open spaces, flowers, trees and fountains, although in Winter it was all grey, dead and probably didn't look as spectacular as it would in Summer. Eventually we made our way to the Ice-rink in the middle. This rink was much larger than the one we skated at in Bruges, but we felt skated out so just spent a few minutes watching everyone else go round and round.

Realising that Platen un Blumen wasn't going to get much different the further we went, we deviated off and headed back into town. It had also started to rain so we stopped off at a pub. We weren't sure if we were hungry enough for lunch yet, Addy was still full from her healthy breakfast, so we just had a beer and to rest our legs.

A building near Planten un Blumen

Once recuperated, we continued through town. By the time we hit the Mega-Christmas market, we were now hungry enough and I decided to have my last Lango. Unfortunately this one was much thinner and crispier than the one I had in Berlin; disappointingly so. Addy had a weird garlic, sour cream bagel thing.

Spotto! Finally. Second one of the trip.

The shopping in town didn't really interest us much and so we continued over towards the docks. We stopped off for another beer at a place that advertised craft beer but it turned out to be another beer hall. Over our brew, we made the decision to go to Naval Museum next, rather than the once again too busy Chocolate Factory. To be honest, we'd exhausted most things we'd wanted to do.

The Naval Museum wasn't too far from the Miniatur Wonderland, and was in a huge ten story warehouse which had been gentrified into a gallery (as much of the factories in that district had been). The security guard at the entrance recommended we work top down instead, and we heeded his advice. Level 10 was all about model boats and dioramas (they love them here, don't they?). The subsequent levels covered topics like fishing, freight liners, military - including submarines, aircraft carriers, destroyers, old and new - costumes and awards and sailing. On one of the floors near the bottom there was a big room dedicated to a freight ship simulator which sounds more exciting than it was, seeing as you max out at 20 knots. The Naval Museum was obvious quite detailed and after our museum experience from earlier in the day we were thoroughly filled with information.

Leaving in the dark, we decided to go back to the hotel for a short break before we went out for dinner. The walk took around 45 minutes and was a bit further than we would have liked. It took us past the marina, where there was an active lighthouse.

A blog post and a quick search for dinner later, and we headed back out bound for dinner. We wanted our last proper dinner to be something good, but also didn't want to hype it up too much and get let down. We decided we would backtrack to a street we'd seen numerous restaurants on, about a 10/15 minute walk from the hotel.

When we arrived we didn't need to window shop, the first place we stopped at looked great. Thamers had an English Pub feel to it, and they did burgs and a few other things. Addy went the chicken burger and I got the Thamer Classic. When the burgers came out we were pretty impressed. They were number 1s, but they were definitely top 5s. Surprisingly enough they also weren't too filling, so we were able to fit in dessert! Chocolate mousse and a cheesecake in a jar, delicious! We were serenaded by a man playing a trumpet and there was a small dog who suddenly appear out from underneath some chairs - plenty of entertainment! Thamers was a perfect last dinner for our trip.

No pictures of the burgs, but the desserts were great!

Tomorrow we are back off to Australia. See you all soon!
D+A