You can barely see it on this map, but it's a really small peninsula sticking out into the ocean.
If the weather is nice, it's a great place to be! They have some rock beaches and a nice sand beach. We eat breakfast, lunch and dinner outside and enjoy the sunshine. This is Henry's second time going and the first year he spent the majority of our trip in his stroller. This year, he had so much fun exploring! He found plenty of rocks, swam in his new pool and spent hours running around in the yard. It wasn't hard getting him to bed since he was spending about 10 hours a day outside. Our first day there was absolutely gorgeous so we took Henry to the nice sand beach. You can walk out like 30 yards into the ocean and the water is never above your knees. However, Henry didn't want to walk out into the ocean. He only wanted to sit in this hole Hannes dug in the sand near the waterline and splash in what essentially was a puddle. It was pretty funny though!
That was all we had planned for this summer, but after spending a few hours on google I found that Hamburg was only a 4 1/2 - 5 hour drive from their summer house. The hotel wasn't expensive and it seemed doable, so I booked it! Hamburg is an absolutely beautiful city full of old buildings. Which is exactly what I'm looking for when I travel. It is a little more calm and less metropolitan than Berlin, but not quite as beautiful as Amsterdam. We pretty much only walked around the city, and ate. We found this amazing Vietnamese restaurant, Quan Do and ate there twice! I would probably go back to Hamburg just to eat Bún Châ from that restaurant. We've already tried to recreate it once since we've been back.
This is central station. Our hotel was just a short walk, about 3 minutes, from here.
This was an area called Alster.
The only thing we really splurged on was a trip to Hagenbeck, the zoo in Hamburg. I thought Henry would absolutely love seeing the animals and I think I was right. It was quite pricey to get in 30 Euros, which is about $50. After living in St. Louis my whole life I have a really hard time paying to get into a zoo. It was a really nice zoo, but like most places had some hidden costs. Like using the bathroom...they had attendants that were looking for "donations". I snuck out every time I had to pee and never donated, I mean, I already paid $50 to get in! They also had food bags that you could get with a "donation". Although, that donation was kind of worth it. I literally had elephants eating out of my hands! And baboons and alpacas. Although, the baboons ate the food that we threw into their enclosure. They may be a little too dangerous to hand feed. It was the most natural looking zoo I have ever been in. All the trails were made of a dirt/sand mixture and they had tons of trees. It was almost like walking through a forest. They also had quite a few animals that were free to roam anywhere they wanted in the zoo. We didn't get a picture, but some of them were this weird mix of hare/deer/donkey.
Henry loved the bears and said "bear" over and over again.
This was the grossest animal I have ever seen! I swear it was trying to figure out how to eat Henry. It kept turning it's nose sideways and sniffing like it was smelling something tasty!
This walrus was hilarious! It stayed in that exact same spot for as long as we could see it. He kept going underwater, holding his breath, then coming up and taking another huge breath and then going back under. It was so cute and we stood there and watched for like ten minutes.
One night, we went to dinner in this neighborhood called St. Pauli. We didn't read much about it beforehand; but apparently, it was really lucky that we were there early in the evening. You can read more about it here, if you want. We ate at this burger place called The Bird. Which, in my opinion, is the best burger I've had in Europe. Although, nothing quite compares to Five Guys. The kids and I ate there in Berlin and when I found out they had just opened one in Hamburg I knew I had to go. They also have amazing hand cut fries and the best cheesecake I have ever had! Plus, it's super cheap (compared to price in Sweden, especially). Hannes and I each had a beer, a burger with fries and we shared a cheesecake all for 35 Euros (323 swedish kronor or $48). It may not seem like a steal to some people, but when you're used to paying $30 for a kind of bad hamburger out, it's a huge deal! While we were walking around we saw this building.
We didn't get a picture of the very best thing that happened the whole trip. I'm still mad about it, but what can you do? I am really bad about taking pictures in general, but I've been even worse lately. I know I've said this plenty of times, but we don't have a camera right now. We take all of our pictures on our phones. Which usually works out fine, but when we travel we can't use our phones...it is way too expensive! So, being practical, I always leave mine in the hotel. Since I can't use it anyway. Then, later when I want to take a picture I realize how stupid it is that I don't have my phone with me. But the next day I do the same thing again!
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| Hannes loves taking these candid pictures of me, but most of them are too hideous to share. |
Anyway, we had been walking around quite a bit. We took the train down to the harbor and then walked about 45 minutes back up to the city hall, or rathaus in German (I found the name hilarious and called it the rat house the entire trip). We decided to let Henry down so he could stretch his legs. There was a big square with plenty of room for him to run without encountering any streets or cars. There was a group of kids on a field trip sitting on the steps outside of the building. As soon as we let Henry out he ran straight over to the kids, turned around, backed up and sat down on the ground right in front of them. It was hilarious! Then, he turned around, smiled and said hi to all of the kids. He sat right there for a few minutes. Until he realized that everyone else was sitting on the step. So, he did what anyone would do...he got up, climbed the steps and sat down right next to the last boy. I almost died! Then, he did the most Henry thing of all, he tried to take the boy's book bag...several times. At one point, I thought about yelling to Hannes to take a picture, but then the kids got up and all stood in line to leave...and of course, Henry got in line right behind them! He can be the cutest sometimes.
For anyone wondering...Henry did amazing on the trip! There were a few times when he got fussy in the car, but I would just climb in the back and entertain him until he was ready to fall asleep again. He had no problems sleeping in the travel cribs anywhere. The only kind of tricky part was that Henry will not go to sleep if we are in the room. So, we had to put him down for bed and then leave the hotel room and hang out on the steps in the hallway until we thought he was sleeping and then quietly sneak back in. We covered the top of his crib with a blanket and watched TV with the sound off (Which wasn't a huge deal because they dub every show in German so we had no clue what people were saying anyway! We did have fun watching 2 1/2 men one night and guessing what was going on.). The only part that was kind of difficult at times was feeding Henry. He's not a super picky eater and usually eats some variation of what we eat every night for dinner, but we didn't always eat food that he wanted. He didn't like the noodles at the Vietnamese restaurant, I still don't know why. So, he ended up eating what was basically a cinnamon roll for dinner that night. He did have a pouch that contained fruits and vegetables so I don't have a ton of guilt over that, but it definitely wasn't the healthiest meal ever prepared.
For anyone who made it to the end of this post...you get a very special surprise! Apparently, this is what Hannes and Henry do when they get up in the morning and I'm still sleeping. Hannes found it so hilarious that he documented it. I figured some people might get a laugh out of it too.
That's a lovely new necklace Henry, but you can only wear it in the house! I also love that his shirt is off and in a ball on the couch.
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