Wuppertal; Friday, 22 September, 2023

I had a bit of a lie in and a later breakfast before heading back to my room to pack my bags and head downstairs into the station to pick up my train out to Wuppertal. On arrival at Wuppertal Hauptbahnhof I dropped my bag into a left luggage locker and went for a wander around the city.

I spent quite a bit of time having a wander through the pedestrianised centre of the city, eventually finding myself at the Elberfeld Town Hall. Elberfeld, along with the neighbouring towns of Barmen, Ronsdorf, Cronenberg and Vohwinkel were merged together in 1929 to form the new city of Wuppertal, with Elberfeld effectively being in the centre of the new city it took on the role of the new city centre with the largest shopping centre and the Hauptbahnhof.

I’d seen the weather forecast for the rest of the weekend which didn’t look good, so I’d decided to focus on visiting museums over the weekend when I’d be needing to find indoor places, so in a break from tradition the first attraction I headed out to was the city’s Botanical Gardens located high above the city centre.

The modern city of Wuppertal is a very thin and long city due to it stretching along the banks of the River Wupper as it travels through a valley, with much of the city stretching up both sides of the hills leading up from the river, meaning there’s lots of high ground, but not much flat ground in the city – it’s also the reason why they adopted their almost unique form of public transport, the Schwebebahn hanging railway which runs over the top of the River as there would be no space to put trams on the main streets without bringing everything to a grinding halt.

I caught a bus from the city centre up to the Botanical Garden and spent quite a bit of time wandering round both the gardens and the wider Hardt area that the gardens are located in, taking in the views down into the city from the high ground.

After quite a lot of time up in the gardens I caught the bus back down into town and stopped off at a café for a late lunch before heading back over to the station to collect my luggage from the lockers and head over to my hotel for the weekend to checkin.

I timed that well as shortly after making it to the hotel the first of several heavy showers decided to pass through, so I spent slightly longer than I’d originally planned in my room waiting for the worst of the wet weather to pass through before heading back out for a bit more of a wander.

I also took the opportunity to have a quick ride a couple of stops on the Schwebebahn before stopping off in the city centre to grab a light dinner before heading back to the hotel for an early night.