Travel: Hamburg and Soltau

Hello everybody,

I can't believe school started today!!! Where has time gone?! Those six weeks were way too short.

As school started today this is going to be my last travelling post in a while now as well as the last one I write whilst having no school.

For my last two weeks, I went to Hamburg and Soltau for about a week with some friends. My last week of summer I spent at home, went shopping and went to some birthday parties.

We left on Wednesday morning really early and took the train to Hamburg so we arrived at around lunch time. We first had some coffee and afterwards went to our hostel to check in and leave our suitcases there. We stayed at the A&O Hostel Hamburg City. It is cheap but still secure and clean. We then just went into the city centre. We visited the atrium of the city hall and went up St. Nikolai and visited the museum right underneath it. Later we chilled at the Binnenalster and then went back to our hostel. In the evening we had a Chinese takeaway as we went to Planten un Blomen (it's one of Hamburg's parks). We had some fun at the playground and later watched one of the "Wasserlichtkonzerte" which happen every evening and have different topics as well as they are for free (they play music as the shoot out water at the big lake and colour it with spotlights...I'm really bad at describing things...soz).

The next day we did a sightseeing tour with one of those busses and went through the Old Elbe Tunnel. Afterwards, we went on a quick little shopping spree at Mönckebergstraße. In the evening we just chilled at our room.

On Friday we took the ferry to get to the Docklands. This is a part of the harbour where all the container ships go. You have a really beautiful view over the harbour. Afterwards, we went back to Planten un Blomen. It was a beautiful day but it suddenly started chucking it down luckily we were near the palm house. There were three different climate types with different plants. I'm not really someone who has a lot of plants or who can keep them alive very well but they had so many beautiful ones there I wanted to take them with me. There was a cactus (i don't remember the name of it) that looked like it had green roses on top of it.
As it was our last day we wanted to get to see as much of Hamburg as possible. We went to one of the richer parts called "Blankenese" and had some nice lunch at an Italian place. As the sun came out again we decided to go to the so called "Treppenviertel" this an area where you can only take stairs to your house. You can't go there by car or bus or even bicycle, the only way to get to your house is taking the stairs. We then went to the beach but we had to leave soon because it started raining again. We took the bus back to the harbour and went to the "Miniatur Wunderland". Honestly, I haven't thought it would be this amazing but it actually was one of the coolest things I have done!!! They also simulated day and night and had planes flying around as well as trains driving everywhere. It was so worth it and I recommend it to everyone who's visiting Hamburg.

The next day we left to go to Soltau. We arrived there in the early afternoon and went to our holiday home. The woman who owns it was super nice and very lovely. After settling in a bit we had a food shop which kinda turned out just buying frozen pizza and other frozen stuff. Although we also bought some fruits. During the late afternoon, we decided to go to the thermal bath which had a salt cave. We spent a fun afternoon/early evening there, then headed home and made us some pizza. The only annoying thing was that no matter how often I showered I smelled of salt and chlorine for four days. Whilst dinner we watched Maggie the most unscary horror movie I've ever seen.

On Sunday we went to the "Heide Park". Probably not the best idea to go there on a Sunday as public transportation isn't really a thing on Sundays there but we still made it. As I'm not a crazy ride freak I didn't go on that many but it still was a fun day and I still managed to do one of the craziest things in my life. The "ADAC" (automobile club in Germany) was there and they had a simulator there that showed you how a rollover in a car feels like. I was sooo shocked afterwards it took me fifteen minutes to realise what has happened. It was unbelievably crazy and amazing. In the evening we watched one of the cutest films called Chappie.

The next day we checked out but as our train home only left at 5 pm we were able to leave our suitcases there and went to the town centre. We had some lunch, walked around and bought some things. Our holiday home lady was so nice she even took us back to the train station. 

I really enjoyed myself and spent some quality with my friends. I wish we could've stayed there longer.

Now here are some pictures! 😛

Love, Steff xx