Hamburg - DAY TWO

Day Two
3rd June, 2006

Once Jess and I got up and out of bed around 10am (Originally Jess woke up at 8am thinking her parents would be up as well. She called them and ended waking them up too), se met outside the hotel and walked over to a small Portugese cafe where Mike and Alex usually have breakfast. We had some cappuccinos and toasted sandwiches and decided to take a little trip into the city centre. Jess and Marilyn were looking to do some shopping... personally I was pretty tired, slightly hung over and constantly hungry.

We took the metro downtown, which was only 3 stops from the hotel. The main strip is filled with stores and malls, since most things are closed on Sundays (This was Saturday) the streets were packed with people. To make a long story short, Jess and Marilyn peeked into bunch of stores, bought some things all very lovely. We made our way up the shopping street and then down again towards the main square near the canal and across from the lake. The architecture was great, the feel of the city was great. Europe.... ahhhhhh.

As we walked up to the square there was some sort of international volleyball tournament going on, music, people, food stands etc. Very nice. We decied to sit down after all the walking and have a beer. We sat in a patio on the water... well actually a patio in the water. It was a floating (tied down) patio. Very nice considering Dublin lacks patios.

After we finished our beers we decided to walk across the street to have a look at the lake. It's a lake right in the middle of the city, other then that, not very exciting. At this point I was getting really hungry to we stopped at a stand and had some sausages hmmmmmmmm, good stuff. Who knew sausage and curry would go well together?

After that we walked back to the metro and went back to the hotel. On the way back we stopped at the grocery store to pick up stuff for dinner. Somehow I managed to convince everyone we should cook, so I ended up cooking pork tenderloin and Jess made a salad. All very good. (Oh 3 bottles of wine, 4 beers, veggies, meat etc was around 50euro, the wine alone would be 50euro in Dublin)

Once we got back Alex popped in thruogh the backyard (Mike and Alex have their rooms facing the back yard), so Alex invited us for some beers and munchies. We sat out back having some drinks etc, and a little later on we were joined by an older couple (The older man, my memory for names sucks, also works with Mike and Alex) from Australia. More drinks, more coversation, etc. After a while I started getting really tired and decied to head up to the room. I took a nice long hot bath which made me feel better, but more tired. As I lay down and tried to nap, like clockwork Jess came in and said it's time for dinner. We went downstairs and cooked dinner in Mike and Marilyn's room.

After dinner we were going to go out for a bit and Mike and Alex were going to take us to the Reeperbahn - the famous street where the Beatles originally started on and where the redlight disctrict kind of stuff is.

There must have been a huge celebration or festival happening because the streets were blocked off and we could hear music as we were getting closer to the Reeperbahn. As we got up to the street it just looked like a war zone... well, with a bunch of drunk, face painted, hat wearing, having a good time Germans. The streets where covered in garbage, broken bottles, you name it. It was a mess. Mike and Alex had never seen it like this and were kind of shocked that it was in this state. Since we were the only sober people on that street, we decided we probably would not fit in too well in any bar or pub so we opted to go somewhere low key/less drunken idots. We hopped on the metro and went to the lake area again. We managed to find seats in a bar/cafe/restaurant right on the lake, we even got a window seat! For the next couple of hours the 5 of us just sat there, yapping away and downing pints of German Pilsner (I drank the wheat beer, really good). We left there around 12:30am hopped back on the metro and headed back to our hotel area. Once we were back on our street, we went into the Greek pub that Jess and I had stopped in the night before. It was packed this time. We sat and drank some more, then we got some German guys (who were in a band, who just came from the Eagles concert) to sing for us. These guys were good! They sang some Eagles songs in 4 part harmonies. Fantastic, very pro.

Around 2am or so I was beered out and with everyone in the pub smoking like crazy(Including the Faulkner Family Chimneys) the smoke (being a smoker myself) just got to me, so I left.

After that I am not sure what happened but Jess got home at daylight. Her and Alex stayed the longest. All and all good times!