Exploring Hamburg

We arrived in Hamburg on Friday, so Saturday was a perfect day to explore the city and be able to enjoy Jeremy's company too, as well as have his help so the kids didn't out number us quite so much.


Our first stop - a beautifully treed walking district with great shopping.

Sarah, Jeremy and the gang of kids

Hamburg is a beautiful city with lots of waterways and beautiful buildings. Sarah and Jeremy were telling me how the city was never ruled by any of the kings that ruled the rest of Germany and surrounding areas, but it was built and developed by businessmen for their interests so it has more continuity than other cities.

Downtown Hamburg - Beautiful!

The weather was perfect for our day out - we were really enjoying it after the heat of Bahrain.

City Hall

The Nivea headquarters are in Hamburg, so we were able to explore all their coolest products in the company's flagship store.

Lunch at a very German restaurant - everything on the menu was made of potatoes! The kids had some potato pancakes and I had a very delicious turkey, cheese, potato souffle.


Dave loving his train ride and gelato

Part of the metro line includes a river boat with beautiful views of the city so we had to include that on our tour...

The huge dock owned and operated by the company my dad works for - Thyssen Krupp

Beautiful Hamburg shore

A more modern view

On the Baltic Sea, Hamburg is a shipping hub

It was a full and fun day. The kids were amazingly well-behaved for all we put them through that day. We did so much walking that (luckily right at the end) both Davey's and my shoes broke! (guess I shouldn't be cheap about shoe buying)

We unknowingly got the kids to bed past 9 o'clock because it was still so light out!

The following day we went to church with our friends and it was quite warm as no one there has air conditioning. The whole trip was hot and I had packed mostly cool weather clothes thinking that being that far north it must be bound to be cold (how quickly I'd forgotten my northern upbringing).

The cutest thing that day was that in church even though we couldn't understand what was being said (the service was in German of course) Davey decided he wanted to bear his testimony. It was hard to convince him that he couldn't since it wasn't fast and testimony meeting. He had never wanted to do this before so I was sad to have to tell him no. He had everything planned out how he was going to talk about how his Daddy and his Grandpa had been sick and he prays for them.

After church we drove through a little village to get more of a feel for the town.

Such a picturesque little spot

We had a delicious German dinner that night with bratwurst, saurkraut and grilled vegetables.

Charlie and Davey loved playing with the most darling twins, Henry and Isabella. Those little babies are just so adorable! They have such wonderful, calm, sweet personalities and they are just beautiful. Charlie wanted to be on Bella - literally touching - all the time (he didn't need any suggestions as in the video in the post below)...

(I'm having trouble with the video code... if anyone thinks they can help me fix it please let me know!)

Thank you Sarah and Jeremy for such wonderful hospitality. We all had so much fun exploring Hamburg with you and getting to spend some time together. We can't wait until we get to see you again!