The first stop on our Island Princess Western Europe cruise was the port of Hamburg. When we visit countries and ports for the first time we almost always book an excursion to get a feel for the place, check off some obvious highlights, or, to mix it up, look for something a little out of the ordinary so that we’re not simply doing the same old tourist things that other cruisers and general travellers do. For Hamburg our options were of the city tour variety or the very long travel to Berlin variety. The latter didn’t appeal for this first German visit, and with the amount of time we had in port and the proximity of the port to the centre of the city we figured we’d be able to explore on foot just as easily. That also meant we didn’t have to set a stupidly early alarm call, and we like not having to do that.

The views of Hamburg from our balcony and from the top of Island Princess weren’t particularly lovely or even mildly interesting, but working port areas in cities often aren’t. Our docking location in the city was at the Altona terminal.

Our original plan was to walk towards the city centre from the port, which we estimated would take a little over an hour when allowing for photo stops, but Princess Cruises had laid on a free shuttle bus service into the town hall square. On a previous cruise with Princess the buses had not been complimentary so we’d not factored this into our reckoning, but now realised that while this might mean we’d miss a few sights on the walk, by taking the bus we could be certain where it was located should we decide that might be the best way to return to the ship later in the day. This would prove to be sensible thinking.

The town hall (well, city hall really, but whatever) is a late nineteenth century building leaning heavily on the considerably earlier Italian renaissance design. The extravagant look was the result of wealth and prestige celebrating the defeat of France by Prussia and the formation of the German empire. The copper roofing, popular at the time as you’ll find in lots of places around Europe when you travel, has now turned green with oxidisation.

The square in front of the hall was largely empty, but the decorations around the bases of the flag poles and the Heinrich Heine Monument by Waldemar Otto attracted a moment’s attention from me.

Our plan to start the day in Hamburg was to head broadly south-southwest from the town hall square towards the former Hanseatic Trade Centre in Speicherstadt, the largest warehouse district in the world built on timber-pile foundations, and a UNESCO World Heritage Site as a result. Our fairly short walk took us to some of the waterways that cross the city of Hamburg and facilitated a lot of the trade for which the warehouses and associated businesses were needed.

The red brick buildings of Speicherstadt were very impressive if you like bold displays of industrialisation. We do.

We crossed over the final canal – Zollkanal (or Customs Canal) which formed the customs barrier of the city and its freeport until 2003 – via the Brooksbrücke Bridge. You’ll never have to look for long if you’re looking for a bridge in Hamburg as it has the highest number of bridges in Europe (around two and a half thousand, if you want to visit them all). Brooksbrücke in its current form was completed in 1887, although a bridge had crossed the water here for centuries before, and one feature of its arched steel framework worth noting is the four different statues at the end of each span; two on the northern side, and two on the southern. Sadly, these are recent replacements for ones that had been present prior to World War II, but they’re still interesting, representing the historical figures of Frederick Barbarossa, Hammonia (or Hamburg), Europe, and St Ansgar.

This brought us to the first place we wanted to visit in the city, and in the next post in this cruise travelogue series we’ll start to look around one of the absolute best things to do in Hamburg (in my opinion), and a place we ended up spending way more time in than we’d expected (and that still wasn’t enough), Miniatur Wunderland.

Why, then, did we visit Miniatur Wunderland in the first place? Well, as I’ve said, it was one of the top-rated things to do in Hamburg, and it wasn’t too far from where the cruise ship would be docked or where the shuttle bus would drop us off. It was either that or churches or museums, mostly, and this just felt like it might be different enough to be interesting, and we’d still have time to do the churches and museums that we typically visit when travelling.

Miniatur Wunderland proved to be more than interesting. It was enchanting. It was stunning. It was far more than we were expecting. We anticipated that we might spend half an hour there, perhaps. Maybe. We actually spent the entire morning in Hamburg in the former warehouse building, and we could easily have taken more time, had a break for lunch in the café there, and eaten up a whole chunk of the afternoon too. To emphasise this further: we love doing new things when we visit places for the second or third time, but if we go back to Hamburg then there’s a very strong chance we might just hit Miniatur Wunderland again. It was that good.

So, what can you expect from a visit to Miniatur Wunderland? It’s going to be rammed with people. If you don’t like crowds then perhaps this isn’t for you. Use of face masks is optional, so consider this too. True to its name, though, your eyes will light up in wonder once you first set foot in the building.

The model railway layouts are roughly grouped geographically so you can wander amongst European cities and landscapes from Italy then Scandinavia then Germany and several others before finding yourself looking down on miniature places in the USA or South America. And since Miniatur Wunderland is always expanding and making changes then don’t be surprised to find Antarctica and Asia appearing in years to come.

Some models are accurate representations of real places, and some are somewhat fictionalised amalgamations of place-types, but the attention to detail is what will mesmerise you and why you’ll spend so long loving every moment here; the figurines of people doing everyday (and sometimes rather odd) activities; decorations inside buildings seen through windows. And through them all, of course, trains or cars or trucks or even other transport types such as balloons and rockets and planes will move around. Some of the vehicles even have cameras in them and there are TV screens allowing you to see what the passengers in those vehicles can see. Words cannot convey the utter joy that is Miniatur Wunderland.

And since words can’t convey it I’ll try to let some of the pictures mostly do the job instead now but you really need to visit to truly appreciate how fantastic this place is.

One interesting aspect was the daily cycle that took place across exhibits. Some areas periodically dimmed the surrounding light level and the scenes took on their night time views, complete with twinkling lights in windows, street lights illuminating, and any related nocturnal activities, including associated sounds.

In the photo below you can get a little sense of the scale of Miniatur Wunderland where some exhibits extend over two floors of the building. It’s both small and massive.

The airport was a fun but noisy area. Stand around near the runway and every minute or two another plane will land or taxi and take off. Lots of different aircraft, lots of different flight operators to spot and say “Ooh, we’ve flown with them!” You’ll be able to see a model plane taking off in the video at the end of this post.

It was nice to see a cruise ship represented in model form at Miniatur Wunderland and, naturally, it had to be a German cruise operator. In this case it was AIDAblu operated by AIDA cruises.

One of the more fictionalised areas – well, we hope – was the series of underground lairs in a cutaway section between rooms with aliens conducting experiments on humans and reinforcing the views of conspiracy theorists with cans of chemtrail mix and filming against moonscape backdrops. A lot of fun.

There were a few interactive areas throughout the Miniatur Wunderland exhibits. You could trigger the start of a Space Shuttle launch, for instance. In the Venice area you could set off an earthquake to shake the scenery, make some of the buildings topple over or lose parts of their façades, and, if you looked carefully, catch a glimpse of some bedroom activity taking place in one of the houses. That wasn’t the only bit of risqué imagery on view, but I wouldn’t want to spoil the surprise of discovering things for yourself.

It was nice to spot a familiar-looking skyline in one part where a town was clearly modelled with thoughts of San Gimignano, a nice trip for us on a previous Princess cruise in Europe.

The final section we passed through was a walkway connecting the main building to another housing the areas they were starting to add to extend the range of exhibits on show, along the length of which a train track sent trains back and forth along a changing landscape from shanty towns to the sea and fields of lavender.

We were hours in Miniatur Wunderland and, as I’ve said before, we could have spent hours more. It’s noisy, crowded, but absolutely should be visited if you’re ever in Hamburg, Germany. It has a café and a large gift shop area too.

In the next post in this cruise travelogue series we’ll make our way to St Michael’s Church in order to see the city of Hamburg from its tower and to see what lay below ground too.

First, though, we had to stroll through some of Hamburg’s streets and over some of the very many bridges spanning the canals running through the city. The water level in areas was incredibly low, exposing mud and beached boats, but we could easily see similarities between Hamburg and other canal-heavy cities with medieval trading connections such as Ghent even if the general overcast conditions didn’t lend the German scenes quite the pretty look of their Belgian counterparts.

The church we visited was St Michael’s Church but you knew that already what with you being a smart person who reads post titles.

The 132-metres high church has long been an important landmark in the city with vessels using it as an aid for navigation but its architecture and history are important too and make it one of the city’s most famous churches (and Hamburg has a few churches) and also its largest. St Michael’s was originally built in the latter half of the seventeenth century and it was the first church to be built specifically for the Protestants rather than simply appropriating formerly Catholic places of worship. The style is baroque and it has a prominent copper-covered spire.

You’ll have noticed the phrase originally built in the previous paragraph and you’ll probably know that old buildings have a tendency to suffer damage, often of the burning kind. In 1750 the church was struck by lightning and was destroyed. The second church suffered destruction again following a fire started during construction work in 1906. The third church was heavily damaged during World War II, as you’d expect, but wasn’t completely destroyed for a change so what you see nowadays is the restored version of that building, and it’s very nice indeed.

That particular feature about St Michael’s Church that attracted us was the fact that we could get up the tower and see over the cityscape of Hamburg. The ticket that grants you access to the tower allows you to choose between climbing the steps or taking the elevator. It’s a hundred metres up and there are no views along the way so we sensibly used the small but very modern elevator, and unless there’s a queue waiting to use it and you’re in a rush or unless you’re a masochist then I’d recommend you do too.

At the top of the St Michael’s Church tower we took in the great views we’d expected. On a sunny day it would probably look even more impressive but even with a thick cover of rain-threatening cloud we weren’t disappointed at the sight of Hamburg from high altitude. Naturally, we tried to locate our ship and the area from which we’d just come.

We finished our visit to St Michael’s Church with a look around the crypt. In more modern times it served as a shelter during Allied bombing on Hamburg in the war but, obviously, its main function was to house the dead and nearly two and a half thousand bodies are interred there. The grave chambers along the floor are up to four metres deep and built to hold up to four graves bodies stacked atop one another. Anyone with enough money could be buried below the church and the funds were used to finance the building of it. Amongst some notable final resting places is one of the sons of J.S. Bach. Within the surprisingly large space you can also see exhibits extracted from less well-preserved coffins during an opening and documentation of some in the twenty-first century.

No, I don’t have a clue why there’s a flashing child statue in the crypt of St Michael’s either.

St Michael’s Church interior is very typical of Lutheran style, being somewhat plain with lots of white surfaces, so it won’t win you over with wonder inside, but ascending to the tower and descending to the crypt make a visit to the church very worthwhile and we came away happy to have made a stop here.

In the next post in this Island Princess cruise travelogue series the weather will play a part in curtailing our tourist intentions so we’ll finish our time in Germany with a visit to a couple of bars because we absolutely couldn’t leave without saying we’d had some drinks in Hamburg.

Rain was due, and if we opted for the museum we were interested in then we would be fairly isolated after that, nowhere really close to the bar we really had our eyes set on, and a decent distance from Island Princess too, meaning we’d potentially be soaked by the time we got back aboard. However, the bar was not open yet and in the opposite direction to the ship. Our plan became: head towards the bar anyway, wandering the streets around the area for anything interesting architecturally, hoping the rain would hold off, then make for the town hall square to get a free shuttle bus back to the ship instead of walking.

This plan lasted just long enough to pass a little bit of Hamburg street art.

The rain started to come down and we needed to re-evaluate quickly so out came the phones and a look at maps. We needed somewhere inside, open, close by, quick, and that led us to a small pub called Vielharmonie. It was a place on a street corner with a few tables and a bar lined with locals; definitely not a tourist’s spot. However, super friendly. We ended up staying for two drinks because there was a bit of chat between the locals and us, and between the barmaid and us. So, yes, if someone asked me if I’d recommend this pub – and I don’t usually like recommending things because personal experiences and expectations come into play – then I’d say yes…

…with a couple of caveats.

Firstly, pretty much everyone at the bar was smoking. This is such an odd thing to see indoors in Europe these days and for us as non-smokers the smell is really off-putting, even before the associated health implications. I mean, we were there drinking beer in the afternoon so I can’t push too much on the health implications but you know there’s still a difference between something that only affects you and something that affects everyone around you. Okay, enough of being on that high horse.

Secondly, cash only. Now, this was something we’d read about before we travelled to Germany so we were half-expecting it but it still took us by surprise. Apparently, allegedly, whatever, Germans haven’t really embraced contactless or even card payments with quite the zeal of the rest of Europe because of a general paranoid fear of government tracking or something, with a large chunk of the country sticking to cash either primarily or, as in this pub at this time, exclusively. We might have stayed for another drink as it was friendly there but the two rounds wiped out the limited amount of Euros we’d brought with us and we ended up stopping at an ATM after this pub visit to get some more in case we’d need it in the next bar.

By this time the bar we’d really wanted to visit was now open so we headed the relatively short distance to Bar Oorlam. We are keen craft ale drinkers so we’d already researched this place and knew it would give us a good opportunity to have some local ales.

Bar Oorlam couldn’t have been more different from the pub we’d just vacated, with a bright, modern feel in pastel colours (which I personally find a little cold and not as welcoming, but then I’m old), a large range of drinks to try, and actual card payments. We were the first people in there, very shortly after it opened, and had a quick chat with the barman before settling in to enjoy some drinks in odd, modern glassware. The look and feel of the place reminded us a fair bit of Microbar Reykjavík from our cruise earlier in the year to Iceland.

We ended up staying for four over the space of a few hours as the bar slowly started to fill up with locals, before deciding we had better head through the streets of Hamburg for our shuttle bus back to the ship.

Back on Island Princess then, and after showering and changing we headed to the dining room for dinner, and it was very good, as usual, and did a decent job at soaking up some of the alcohol content from our day ashore in Germany.

Of course, there was more drinking in the evening, and we enjoyed a little bit of the sail away along the Elbe from our balcony late in the evening, but only a little bit as that rain was still there.

In the next post in this series we’ll enjoy a day at sea on Island Princess with a look around the ship and a first chance to swim in the indoor pool on the ship.