Interrail day 22, 23 & 24 - Hamburg

I arrived in Hamburg on the Sunday evening, and met my cousin Judith close to her place. We prepared dinner, ate, and called it a night.

The next morning, I slept in a bit and went out to visit Hamburg around lunchtime.

I met up with Judith on the docks, and we got one of those typical Hamburg fish sandwiches before getting on the city ferry to go around the river Elbe.

This ferry works exactly like a regular bus or tram, so if you already have a metro or bus ticket for the day, you can just hop on and enjoy the boat ride.

While it's very nice and refreshing to have water flowing through the heart of the city, the banks of the Elbe are extremely constructed and industrialised so it doesn't bring as much freshness as in a city like Venice for example.
But then being the second largest city in Germany with almost 2 million inhabitants, it's to be expected really.

After Getting off the ferry, we continued walking through the city, visiting the highlights Hamburg has to offer.

The first notable monument we saw was the St Michaelis Church.
I'm usually quite critical of the aesthetics of churches, because of the sombre and gloomy atmosphere, but I was very pleasantly surprised with this one. I'm guessing it's probably due to the fact it's a fairly recent church, being "built three times between 1647 and 1912 and completely destroyed twice" according to the tourist information website of Hamburg.

The outside is already a bit more colourful than usual, using Hamburg's typical red bricks. Then the inside feels much more lively with the prominent use of white.

We continued roaming the streets of Hamburg in the late afternoon sun, offer superb lighting for pictures.

To finish the day, we walked past the city hall, ordered a kebab in Judith's favourite place, and ate it in Sternschanzen Park, before heading back home.

The next day, I left to catch the train for Bonn in the early afternoon.