…our journey to Hamburg was slightly disrupted. We had to change trains unexpectedly at the Dutch/German border (we think there was an engine issue), and our connection at Osnabruck was about 50 minutes late so we didn’t arrive in Hamburg until about 7pm.

We only had one night in Hamburg so we weren’t expecting it to be much more than a break in the journey.

We took a taxi to the 25 Hours Hotel in Hafencity, a newly developed area much like London Docklands. The hotel proved to be very quirky but excellent. The whole place was based on the concept of a sea captain’s quarters, it sounds a bit naff but it was actually very stylishly done. There was a wooden trunk in our room which served as a dressing table and housed the (free) mini-bar, there was a rope ladder hanging from the ceiling to hang things on.

Just along the corridor from our room there was a comfortable lounge area and the Vinyl Room with sofas, a record deck and a large selection of LP’s to listen to. We hadn’t made any dinner plans but we’re able to get a table in the hotel restaurant and had a truly excellent meal. The whole experience was all the better for being so unexpected.

At breakfast the next morning the waitress asked why we were visiting Hamburg, we said that we were just passing through on our way to Norway. She explained that there was a big music festival in Hamburg over the weekend, that explained why everybody else in the hotel was 40 (50?) years younger than us!!

With just a couple of hours before our train departed for Copenhagen we took the chance to visit nearby Speicherstadt, a huge complex of C19th warehouses on the river Elbe which have been renovated and declared a UNESCO world heritage site. The commercial/industrial buildings were magnificent and built like cathederals. Speicherstadt was  about 5 minutes from the hotel and a perfect place to stretch our legs before our next train journey.