Day 17 - Kiel to Hamburg
Our whole group got off the ship without any issues and sat down on the dock waiting for our next contact, Bodo, who met us and escorted us to Hamburg.
On the way, Bodo gave us a running commentary touching on local information, things to do, history of the areas of Germany we were driving through etc. all was quite interesting and the time went quickly. We stopped at Ahrensburg Castle on the way, which was more of a rest stop then anything else.
We arrived at our hotel in Hamburg just before 12 noon and of course our rooms weren't ready. Patiently waiting our turn, we each used the tiny elevator which only just held 2 people and their 2 suitcases up to the 1st floor reception where we totally stressed out the receptionist. With all 31 of us waiting in a small area she was visibly not coping and unable to find a solution to store our many cases. The baggage storage room was quite small with already little room to spare, so whilst she held her head in her hands, we attempted to vertically stack the cases in the luggage room and out of the way. Off we all went exploring eventually returning to check in after 14:00.
Tania and I decided to go for a Tania tour rather than waste 2 hours waiting for our room to be ready. The other interesting fact regarding the hotel was that there was a sex shop on the ground floor and the street we were in was one of the seediest streets in Hamburg. There were visible homeless people, beggars, drug users (actually shooting up in the street), prostitutes, fights, broken glass, fresh blood stained ground, bouts of screaming etc etc … and this was only Saturday midday - oh joy! - Anyway, more on that later.
We set out for our walk and not far into it, whilst looking at our map a lovely local lady came up to us and asked if she could help. 20 mins later, she had pointed out all the interesting places for us to visit, how to get there by public transport, also how to get to the airport when we needed to fly out. How nice! We walked for 5 hours through the main CBD, the UNESCO heritage listed warehouse district and back to our hotel by 17:00.
Graeme's feet, hips and knees were feeling sore ! We checked in only to find out we were on the 5th floor - the 2 + 2 person lift only went to the 4th floor - which meant we had to drag our cases up the last flight of stairs. This hotel was a last minute change by TripADeal and there was not one person on our tour that was happy with it !
There had been talk on the way to Hamburg that we would all meet at the bar in the lobby of the hotel for our final night together- problem was there was no bar in the lobby of this hotel. We sent out a message through the chat group that had been organised at the start of the tour and learnt that at least 3 couples in our group had in fact changed hotels. Raymond, who suffers from MS and his wife were allocated a room with a share bathroom - totally inappropriate and unacceptable ! We were able to round up 4 couples in total for final drinks in a nearby hotel, and then 3 of us couples went to a Lebanese restaurant for a tasty dinner.
Some sad goodbyes and we were back in bed by 23:00, going to sleep with the sounds of the seedy street in the background. Let's hope the hotel breakfast in the morning is not disappointing.
Sadly, not a great way to finish with the group! I’m sure things will improve from here.