The drive from Frankfurt to Hamburg alone was over 5 hours, so we planned two pit stops at some gorgeous looking castles. When you plan a big trip like this, you do it over the course of several months, not realizing that everything you planned would be seen and experienced over the course of 2 weeks. What I mean, is that when you plan a trip, the key to a successful holiday is diversity! That's not to say that this trip to Denmark, Austria and Germany didn't have lots of diversity, but at the same time...it also had way too many castles. Granted, I LOVE castles, but even by the end of the trip, I didn't need to see that many more. Unfortunately, when you have a 5 hour drive between 2 major cities in a foreign country where you don't speak the language, your sightseeing options are relatively limited.
Our first stop for the day came about and hour and a half after leaving Frankfurt. We arrived at Eltz Castle still owned and lived in by the Eltz family. I find this exceptionally cool! We took the guided English tour that showed us some of the older parts of the castle (obviously not the current living apartments), and then got back on the road. What I especially liked about this castle is that you could get really awesome views of the entire thing by taking a little walk up the hill.
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| Eltz Castle |
The next castle (Loverin Castle) was about three hours away from Eltz. We stopped for gas and grabbed some gas station lunch and continued on our way. Now, you have to realize that at this point in the trip, we started suffering from travel fatigue. That's only natural when you go anywhere for 10+ days and do as much driving around as we did. City after city, castle after castle...driving, driving, endlessly driving. I honestly don't know how my husband did it.
So, we neared the next castle, but missed the entrance for parking which was a bit of a walk from the castle itself. We could have easily turned around, parked and continued with our visit, but the day had turned a little rainy and dreary, so instead we just gave up and decided to push through and continue to Hamburg.
We hadn't intended on spending another 3.5 hours in the car, but the drive to Hamburg proved difficult thanks to traffic and construction. Those German autobahns can be speed limit-less but when there's construction, you find yourself going 45 MPH with the rest of the cars on the road.
Weary eyed and exhausted, we arrived in Hamburg. We found the ARCOTEL Onyx easily, and were pleased with the underground parking garage and keycard elevators. The hotel advertised as being in the "Theater District" and as we exited the hotel to find dinner, we quickly realized that "Theater District" is apparently synonymous with "Red Light District" in Hamburg. Lord have mercy! We certainly did not expect THAT.
Prostitution is legal in Germany, but up until now, we saw very little overt signs. Perhaps our other hotels were in better parts of town. Not that our Hamburg hotel was in a bad part of town. There were families with children all over the place, and our hotel room faced a children's playground. We also saw signs for the Lion King...it was unfortunately right next to a brothel that advertised their "services" for the bargain price of 30 Euros. As we walked down the street, it was obvious to us that while this particular neighborhood was trying to become the theater district, the red light district still dominated. Shop after shop after shop tried soliciting new customers to enter their "adult" shops, gentlemen's clubs, etc. It was more than awkward. (Side note. When we visited Bangkok, Thailand a few years later, we made a point to avoid the infamous Thai red light district though looking back, I think it would have been interesting to compare the two.)
Perhaps our American prudery got the better of us. We dashed into the first dining establishment we could find (a Burger King), and then quickly retreated to the comforts of our hotel for the evening.
We only had about a half day of activities planned in Hamburg because we had more driving ahead of us in order to make it across the Danish border by dinnertime. The first stop for the day was a place called the "Minature Wunderland" in the warehouse district. This part of Hamburg still has many of the historic buildings used for the massive shipping industry for which the city is known. I encourage you to read about the Hamburg fires during World War II. Interesting story.
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| Hamburg Warehouse District |
Even if you're not into model trains and train platforms, the "Minature Wunderland" is really neat. The trains were only a very small part of the massive displays. The miniature cities and towns impressed me the most. They had European cities, old fashioned carnivals, small towns, and even a section to the United States (my least favorite part actually as it really only featured New York City and Las Vegas). There was even a miniature chocolate factory with a button visitors could push that spit out a real piece of chocolate. As a child who loved doll houses, I simply loved this miniature display. My in-laws weren't as impressed with it as I was, however. I think it just depends on your personal taste. The place does get really crowded, so try to get there early. Watch their website too for peak times to avoid when lines and crowds are at their worst. We visited on a Monday morning in August, and we were fine.
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| Minature Wunderland - Hamburg, Germany |
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| Minature Wunderland - Hamburg, Germany |
After the Minature Wunderland, we made our way further into the more modern area of Hamburg to a placed called the Chocoversum. I read a lot of reviews about this place before we visited. Many of the reviewed warned that the tours were all in German, but that it was still worth visiting. I was definitely wary of that, but we decided to go anyway. We arrived to catch the 10:15 tour, and true to the reviews, the tour was completely in German. They did give us a laminated English guidebook that went into pretty good detail about everything that we were seeing, but even after we finished reading the English portion, the tour continued on for 10+ minutes at each stop completely in German. Our guide, however, did speak English and after she finished talking in German, she came over to us and covered quickly in English, whatever wasn't covered in the book.
Aside from getting to make our own chocolate bars, the best part of the tour was getting to taste different things throughout the whole chocolate making process. First was the raw seed from the cacao plant which had a very bitter, herbal taste. We then could taste the inside of the bean after the defermentation process and again after the roasting process. Only after the roasting did it even begin tasting like what we think chocolate should taste like.
The next chocolate samples were melted. The first one was after the chocolate is first mixed with sugar, but still very dark. The second was the milk chocolate powder. Third was a sample of the milk and dark chocolates on a wafer. Lastly, they gave us a sample of chocolate after it's packaged for shipping.
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| Cacao pod with edible seeds |
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| Proportions when making dark, milk, and white chocolate |
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| Making our own candy bars |
We retrieved our personalized candy bars at the end of the tour, and then proceeded to do some massive souvenir shopping. The gift shop not only had ever type of chocolate you could imagine eating including super dark and flavored chocolates, but they also had every manner of chocolate scented products. I really enjoyed this place and highly recommend visiting if you're ever in Hamburg. Quick note, the visit wasn't long either. I mentioned that we took the 10:15 tour, and we were finished by lunchtime.
We found a quick bite to eat (and not a terribly good one, if I recall), at a little street-side cafe. On our way out of the city, we made one last stop at a place called the "Port of Dreams" aka the Hamburg immigration port. Here, thousands and thousands of immigrants left Germany and sailed to America. We took a look inside the main building itself and then took advantage of the research computers they had with free access to Ancestry.com. I wish I had been more prepared for that to look up more information about my own family heritage.
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| Hamburg - Port of Dreams |
From the immigration port, we packed back into the car and hunkered down for another long drive. Fortunately, the winds and traffic were in our favor, and we experienced the true meaning of the notorious German autobahn on our way back to Denmark.
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| German autobahn - 180 kph |
Thanks for reading!
- Foxy the Traveler
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