Lubeck - Day 13 (28 July)
Pretty well everything is closed on a Sunday in Germany except restaurants and tourist things like museums. We decided that staying in Hamburg on a Sunday was probably not a good plan. So hopped on a train north to Lubeck. Only about 45 minutes by train and you get very close to the Baltic Sea.
Lubeck was once the capital of the Hanseatic group of cities/towns. We seem to specialise in visiting old Hanseatic places. I got excited and googled "list of Hanseatic places" to see if maybe I could come up with a theme based holiday. However was discouraged by the vast number of places so disgarded that idea. Old Hanseatic towns tend to be very scenic we have found previously - like Tallin, Bergen and Visby. Lubeck is also pretty. It lost about 20% of the old city in WWII but enough remains for it to be a UNESCO World Heritage site. Possibly one of the remaining city gates - Holsten Gate that seems to appear on all the tourist brochures is one of the most striking sites. The area around the Town Hall is also pretty striking. There also seem to be a lot of churches. We went up the tower of one as it gave a good view of Lubeck but left the others unvisited as we guessed that being Protestant they tend to be pretty plain inside. We prefer our churches gothic generally. You also can see bits of what was obviously the old city wall at another end where there is another gate - Burgtor. Not as impressive city gate but still worth visiting.
We had purchased a tourist map from the tourist office as had been told that this map provided you with a self-guided walking tour. Like the Hamburg ones we have used, they widely underestimate how long these tours take so we did end up taking a few shortcuts. There are also just so many cute cobbled streets and churches we can take in one day.
Found some similarities with a place we visited about 3 years ago - Visby on the Island of Gotland (Sweden). Largest island in the Baltic Sea and also once part of the Hanseatic League. Both places have lots of churches for such small places, have these sheep statues on the street and roses growing up from the ground on the side of the houses front doors. I suppose not exciting but was funny to see the common ground and brought back some memories.
Lubeck is very touristy we thought and also looked to be pretty prosperous. I am glad we went. The architecture and history is so different for us but would I bother coming back? I wouldn't.
Got lucky with the weather. Lovely sunny day and only really started to get a bit warm as we were leaving. We probably guaranteed this as were concerned about some rain so poor Stephen lugged around rain jackets in a backpack all day plus wore long trousers.
Lubeck was once the capital of the Hanseatic group of cities/towns. We seem to specialise in visiting old Hanseatic places. I got excited and googled "list of Hanseatic places" to see if maybe I could come up with a theme based holiday. However was discouraged by the vast number of places so disgarded that idea. Old Hanseatic towns tend to be very scenic we have found previously - like Tallin, Bergen and Visby. Lubeck is also pretty. It lost about 20% of the old city in WWII but enough remains for it to be a UNESCO World Heritage site. Possibly one of the remaining city gates - Holsten Gate that seems to appear on all the tourist brochures is one of the most striking sites. The area around the Town Hall is also pretty striking. There also seem to be a lot of churches. We went up the tower of one as it gave a good view of Lubeck but left the others unvisited as we guessed that being Protestant they tend to be pretty plain inside. We prefer our churches gothic generally. You also can see bits of what was obviously the old city wall at another end where there is another gate - Burgtor. Not as impressive city gate but still worth visiting.
We had purchased a tourist map from the tourist office as had been told that this map provided you with a self-guided walking tour. Like the Hamburg ones we have used, they widely underestimate how long these tours take so we did end up taking a few shortcuts. There are also just so many cute cobbled streets and churches we can take in one day.
Found some similarities with a place we visited about 3 years ago - Visby on the Island of Gotland (Sweden). Largest island in the Baltic Sea and also once part of the Hanseatic League. Both places have lots of churches for such small places, have these sheep statues on the street and roses growing up from the ground on the side of the houses front doors. I suppose not exciting but was funny to see the common ground and brought back some memories.
Lubeck is very touristy we thought and also looked to be pretty prosperous. I am glad we went. The architecture and history is so different for us but would I bother coming back? I wouldn't.
Got lucky with the weather. Lovely sunny day and only really started to get a bit warm as we were leaving. We probably guaranteed this as were concerned about some rain so poor Stephen lugged around rain jackets in a backpack all day plus wore long trousers.
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