Hamburg; Monday, 18 June, 2007

I finished breakfast and checked out of the hotel and, as per usual, put my luggage into the left luggage lockers at one of Hamburg’s many stations. I walked the short distance from Dammtor to the edge of the Alster lake to pick up one of the other tours that are available.

The flussfhart runs from the lake, through two locks to the old harbour and out onto the Elbe, along the way it takes in both the new harbour developments and the old harbour buildings. The tour was quite interesting, but as my German has become very rusty I understood less than a tenth of what was being said (two years ago I could probably have understood closer to a quarter, so the rust has set in on a pretty dodgy grasp of the language to begin with!)

After the tour I took the U-Bahn round to St Michaels church. It stands a little over 300m from St Nicholas's, but unlike the former was rebuilt after the war. Like St Nicholas's it also offers a lift to a viewing platform at the base of its spire, offering equally stunning views, especially of the blackened and charred spire of St Nicholas's. I walked back to the U-Bahn station and caught the train round one stop and another attempt to visit Cap San Diego. Thankfully, today it was open.

The ship is pretty impressive, especially when you get below decks and see the massive storage decks, and go deep down into the bowels of the ship to look around the engines, and mechanics of the ship. By the time I surfaced from the incredibly stuffy and hot innards of the ship, I was quite glad for the rain that had started, however it soon became clear that rather than a brief shower, this was only going to get heavier. I had left myself another 40 minutes of sightseeing before I had to leave to go to the airport, in the end I decided I would prefer 40 minutes extra sitting in the airport than 40 minutes getting soaked, so I headed back to Dammtor, picked up my luggage and made my way back to the airport.