48 hours in Hamburg

Now you might be thinking surely you didn’t manage to fit anything into a 48 hour window when you consider airport waiting times and travel times. I’m here to prove you wrong.

With return flights coming in at £26 from Manchester to Hamburg, I was not going to leave that ticket there! Initially this was going to be a solo trip flying on Saturday morning and coming home on Sunday evening, but it turned out my mum also liked the sound of a cheap city weekend break (clearly I got my travel bug from her!) and she decided to come with. To avoid being scammed out by Ryanair I highly suggest packing as lightly as possible and try to get everything you need into a backpack to prevent having to pay stupid amounts for carry on luggage and also do not bother paying for a seat, I was allocated a ‘middle’ seat but turns out my whole row was empty, so I think that speaks for itself.

After a 5am wake up on Saturday morning, we boarded our Ryanair flight at 8am and landed in Hamburg one and a half hours later (the short flight time definitely helped with having enough time to pack everything in). We arrived at the airport in Germany and jumped into a taxi and just asked the driver to take us to the city centre. Before I head off on short city breaks like this, I tend to do a little bit of research and read a couple of blogs to find out what’s good to see and also where the hotspots are for the best food in the city (I am a massive foodie after all!). I then save all these places on my Google maps and just wander around all the little green dots I have placed on my maps and see what I stumble across, I’ve found that this is the most chilled way of really getting to see a city in a short space of time.

Here’s a quick intro in Hamburg’s history, because after all, I can’t be a history graduate and not give you a few fun facts. Hamburg is Germany’s second largest city after Berlin and lies on the River Elbe in the north of the country. The city has witnessed ALOT in its history from the Great Fire of Hamburg in 1842, the North Sea flood of 1962 and World War II bombing raids to name a few. Therefore, it’s been rebuilt a fair few times so many of the buildings vary dramatically from one to another from medieval architecture to grey post-war concrete jungles. As a port city, Hamburg has a lot of bridges…around 2,500 to be precise, making it the city with the highest number of bridges in Europe.

Anyhow…so we did some wandering and here’s what we came across:

The town hall also known as Rathaus (translated as Rat House, make of that what you wish)

The Speicherstadt district was beautiful and is the largest warehouse district in the world

We couldn’t not go and visit the Elbphilharmonie, one of the largest concert halls in the world resembling a water wave as a nod to the city’s port industry. I highly recommend taking a trip up to the Plaza, an observation deck on the 8th floor, see below for the views…

We were also super lucky with the weather! It stayed dry and sunny for the most part, but make sure you pack layers if you go in the winter months, it gets pretty windy thanks to it being a port city!

After wandering around the Speicherstadt district, we headed to Hamburg’s infamous red light district, the ReeperBahn. We thought it was best to visit this area in the daytime and actually found it to be quite a quirky area with some really cool street art mixed in with the insane amount of graffiti that covers every wall in Hamburg!

We also walked all along the dock around the St Pauli area which was bustling with locals and lots of quirky looking cafes and coffee shops.

At around 3pm on Saturday we decided we needed a little break as we’d been up since 5am and still hadn’t checked into our hotel. We walked over to the Mercure Hamburg Mitte hotel in the north of the city and took a couple of hours to rest and have a nap.

I’d booked a table at a local German restaurant called Hofbräu an der Alster which I had seen recommended for authentic German food (their speciality is actually food from Munich). The ambiance was great in this restaurant, despite it still being relatively early on a Saturday evening and the food was really delicious. We went for a sausage salad to start with which we thought would be lots of leaves and a couple bits of sausage however it turns out it was spirallized sausage with a couple of leaves. It was certainly unexpected but pretty yum nevertheless. For main course, I decided to go for the famous German pork knuckle with potato dumplings and gravy (this did not disappoint) and my mum went for veal schnitzel which was essentially a massive chicken nugget but it was really delicious.

Pork knuckle and potato dumplings

We decided to have an early night after seeing off a bottle of wine as we were pretty exhausted and knew we would have a busy day the next day.

We got up quite early on the Sunday morning as we wanted to explore Hamburg’s famous Fish Market. This was not your typical smelly fish market but an outdoor strip of endless entrepreneurs selling all sorts of items, from fresh raw fish to fish butties and sandwiches as well as a whole host of other stalls selling a range of different items. The market actually closes at 9.30am on a Sunday so you do have to get there quite early. It’s quite a fun place to be as it’s known to be THE place to go after a heavy night out, so there’s a real mix of tourists, families picking up their weekly groceries and drunken teenagers, it’s quite a vibe. We hadn’t had any breakfast so decided a fresh smoked salmon sandwich would be a good choice, and it didn’t disappoint.

I had two of these and I have no regrets…

After the Fish Market closed, we wandered over to the city centre near the town hall and grabbed a coffee and a hot chocolate at a beautiful cafe right on the river with an amazing view (I’m not talking about myself obviously)…

The frothiest hot chocolate I have ever seen

At 11am on Sunday we went on a free walking tour of the city. Now if this is something you’ve never done before or never thought of doing…do it. Every time I go to a new city I always book onto a free walking tour. They are the best way to get a whistle stop tour of a city and really get your bearings which is especially helpful if you are in a city for a couple of days. Most of these tours are led by students so they are often super enthusiastic and interesting and usually have some great recommendations for places to visit in and around the city. We went on a walking tour organised by Robin and the Tourguides and I picked this company as they had really good reviews. The tour was 2 hours long and it was a fantastic insight into the history of Hamburg, I would highly recommend one of these tours if you’re heading to Hamburg.

St. Nikolai Church – was the tallest building in the world from 1874 to 1876. The bombing of Hamburg in WW2 destroyed the bulk of the church. The removal of the rubble left only its crypt, its site and tall-spired tower, largely hollow save for a large set of bells. 

Panoramic views of the city from the top of St Michael’s Church known for its 132m-tall copper-covered spire. Don’t take the stairs to the top, take the elevator…for your own sanity.

After the walking tour, mum and I headed to an area of the city known as the Portuguese Quarter (bit rogue I know) and it’s where many Portuguese and Spanish immigrants settled in the 1960s and 70s. We went to a lovely restaurant in this area for lunch where mum had a selection of Spanish/Portuguese tapas items and I had fresh shrimp with potatoes in a spicy sauce.

We were pretty stuffed after lunch so decided we needed to do more walking and so spent the rest of the afternoon wandering around. Honestly I don’t know how much more we needed to see of Hamburg I think it was a perfect place to visit for a quick weekend getaway. It’s a beautiful city with a rich history and everyone we spoke to whilst we were there were helpful, kind and very friendly. At around 4pm on the Sunday we headed off to the airport and got our flight back to Manchester.

This really was a whistle stop tour of Hamburg but we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves and I would highly recommend visiting this fantastic city should you get the chance!

Love

Danni

xxx