15 July 2014 Hamburg Day trip to Bremen

24C Cloudy with sunny breaks

Today we took a day trip to Bremen, it was just 55 mins by train on the ICE from Hamburg and in no time at all we had arrived. I had booked a walking tour in English at 2pm so we spent the morning having a look around at the Town Hall and Market Place in the centre of town and then took a look at the Waser River and visited St Martins Church. I then hit the shops which are very central in this small town. The time flew and after a quick Rostbratworst Roll with copious amounts of mustard we were ready to start the tour.

Our guide was an older woman but the group was a mixture of English and German so once again we had an abridged version of a tour. She took us to the famous statue of the donkey, the dog, the cat and the rooster. After the explanation of the statue from the guide we decided to buy the story book as we could not believe her explanation. Clearly something had been lost in translation and now we understand the history of the statue. It's a fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm called the Bremen Town Musicians, the link is …

http://www.bremen-tourism.de/bremen-tow n-musicians-1

The town is very special with its tiny streets ad houses and quaint buildings, unfortunately once again a lot of Bremen was destroyed in the 2nd World War but faithfully restored around the Town Centre. Our tour went for over 2 hours and finished in the Schnoor Area which is the oldest part of Bremen and the tourist area.

Our train left at 5.15 to take us back to Hamburg and we had dinner at a Portuguese Restaurant in our street. I cannot believe the business the restaurants do in this street, there must be 30 of them and they are full. As one group leaves another arrives so tables are used 3 or 4 times each night. The food is reasonably priced and tonight I had a chicken clay pot which was great.