Monday, May 09, 2005

More Hamburg & on to Munster

Brehan, Moya, Sophia & Troy on the Aussenalster after Sunday morning brunch.
Sophia & Troy with a very scary swan
Uncle Brehan helping Sophia with walking & swinging.
Playing with chairs in the rain at the Munster beer festival.
The Munster Festival.
After a great lazy Sunday morning with Brehan, we had brunch at a very funky cafe on the Aussenalster, one of the lakes in Hamburg, and then began the long drive back to Paris. Unfortunately, getting on the road at 1:30 on a Sunday afternoon, after a long holiday weekend out of a Hamburg Party was not the best idea. The drive on the autobahn went from 150kph to 0 every other mile and it was exhausting!!! We ended up getting off the autobahn, and taking the side highways to the next largest town where we thought we could find a hotel. It basically took us just over 5 hours to go about 90 miles, where we decided to stop & spend the night before doing the other 7 hours of the drive on Monday.
We ended up in a little town called Munster, at the end of their weekend beer festival. We were able to grab a couple of beers, enjoy the music, have a late dinner, pick up some bootleg CDs for the long drive the next day, and found a hotel with a very large closet (for the all important pack & play).
The drive the next day was much more pleasant!

Sunday, May 08, 2005

Hamburg with Uncle Brehan

Brehan & Moya in the pedestrian zone downtown by the city hall.
The remains of the bumbed out church of St Nikolai - a sybmol against war.
Beers & Fish & Chips at the harbour festival!
Breakfast in Brehan's kitchen

Traveling to Hamburg

Dinner outside in Dusseldorf in the old pedestrain zone - great beer & Italian food...
Brehan & Sophia on the baseball field.
Walking along a canal from the field. Sophia wanted to hold Brehans hand the whole time!
Brehan, Sophia & Troy at the town hall.

May is a great month in France - there are 4 different public holidays this month, so we decided to combine a couple for a long weekend to go to Hamburg to hang out with Uncle Brehan! The drive was a little longer because we forgot any CDs to listen to, but we overnighted in Dusseldorf on the way there, and arrived in the beautiful Hamburg neighborhood of Eppendorf the following afternoon.

It was a bit colder in Hamburg than we were expecting - we ended up having to purchase Sophia a foot sack for her stroller in order to keep her warm - and much busier due to the 100th anniversary celebration of the Hamburg Harbor -great beer gardens & fish on the waterfront.

Hamburg really surprised us, we were expecting fairly unattractive post-war buildings all over the city due to the bombings of WWII, but the canals and neighborhoods were wonderful!

It was great fun to hang out with Brehan, Sophia loved the entertainment in the back seat, and see a bit of the life that he has created over the last couple of years.