GERMANY - DAY 4

An earlier start today as this was our longest travel day of the entire tour. After a wonderful breakfast we ventured forth onto the bus and settled down to travel to Hamelin, made famous by the brothers Grimm fairytale, "The Pied Piper of Hamelin." The Germans have a more sinister name for the pied piper, they call him 'The Rat Catcher'. Along the way Paul entertained us with the story of the pied piper.

After a quick pit stop with very interesting toilets we were back on the bus. Pretty much throughout Germany you have to pay 70 euros for the pleasure of using toilets. At least at this toilet stop you got a show with the toilets. After you flushed the toilet, the seat rotated around and was sprayed with water cleaning the seat. We thought this was novel.

We arrived in Hamelin and after walking through a tunnel entered the city centre. It was gorgeous. It was hidden away. The rest of the city was modern, but coming up from the tunnel feels like stepping back in time to a bygone era.

We followed the path of the rats, shown to us by small rat emblems embedded in the path towards the river. After a quick lunch we wandered into the church to see the stain glass window depicting the pied piper. Pasqual and I wanted to get a charm for the girls bracelets and we ran through the town searching until we found some. The man kindly threw in a little rat for each as well. We then had to hustle to get back to the bus on time. We only just made it.

Back on the bus we continued towards Hamburg the busiest gateway to the sea. Driving into Hamburg we spotted several flak, which is a tower that people used to hid in during the bombing. Once we arrived in Hamburg we wandered around. We saw a huge statue of Otto Von Bismarck the founder of unified Germany. We saw The Rathaus, the German's answer to Buckingham Palace. It is a gorgeous building. The Germans are very proud of it and boast that it has 6 more rooms than Buckingham Palace. It was totally destroyed by fire in 1842 and rebuilt. It is now the Town Hall. We walked down to the lake and took several shots of the fountain in the middle. We have to admit that Hamburg is set out beautifully. We headed back to wait for the bus and tried tchiba, the German coffee. It was very nice.

We traveled through St Pauli where the Reeperbahn is. This is Hamburg's red light district. Lots of stores, clubs etc for people to enjoy, if you get my drift. There were lanes leading off where we will let your imaginations run wild. We covered the girls eyes through this part. It wasn't anything too bad. We even stopped for a super quick photo shot of the Beatles-Platz, where it all began for the fab four, though in those days there were five.

We boarded the boat that took us on a tour around the port of Hamburg. Here we got up and personal with cargo ships, the floating dry docks, tugs and ocean-going vessels. It is very true what they say about Hamburg, the Port of Hamburg really is Germany's "Gateway to the World". It was massive. This port was also where the fated Bismarck was built. They even have a piece of steel that was left over from the ship on dock 2 as tribute to the ship.

On the way back to the hotel we past a cathedral that was destroyed by bombing during the Second World War which has been left this way as a memorial to all the civilians that died during the bombing raids on Hamburg.