O Holy Night

Same procedure as every year.

Happy Halloween!

The Moselle

On a warm long weekend, we took a trip to the Moselle valley. It is nice. We camped and stopped in the places pictured below.

Hamburg

We did a long weekend trip to Hamburg in the spring, since the Thursday was a holiday in Germany. We saw the harbor area, then walked over to the Reeperbahn area, the red light district, where the Beatles also played when they were starting out. We had dinner at a vegetarian restaurant (Leaf) in Altona, a gentrified area west of the Reeperbahn area. The next day we saw the Speicherstadt and the Miniatur-Wunderland. The amount of deatil there was very impressive. Then we had lunch at Ti Breizh, which serves gallettes and the same French cider (Val de Rance) that we had at another crepe place in Berlin. After that we walked around more, by the old town hall, and stopped for tea at an art nouveau cafe (Cafe Paris). Then we went by the Chilehaus. We had dinner at an Asian restaurant (it's a thing in Germany to combine countries). That night we went to a Laura Marling concert with Gill Landry as opener. It's not the first time we've combined a concert with a visit to a city (Paul McCartney in Vienna and the Decemberists in Zurich, e.g.). The next day we went over to Blankenese, a rich area with nice houses on a hill overlooking the river. There were a few old-style houses with thatched roofs. Then we took the ferry back to the city center and went to the Museum for Kunst & Gewerbe, which had Islamic art and tatoo exhibits and an art nouveau room. Then we went to dinner in the Schanzenviertel (another hip area of Hamburg). I got a veggie burger at a vegetarian burger (and other things) place. Then we went to a seafood restaurant, where I got salad. Our last morning, Sunday, we went to the fish market, which sells fish and lot of other things. It is funny to see all the people who have partied all night stumbling around at 7am. In the old fish auction hall they keep the party going with a live band and beer drinking. There was also a plant seller who had kind of a performance for selling the plants. Some of the other sellers were also kind of entertaining. After that we stopped at a Portuguese bakery before going up the bell tower in St. Michael's church. We then went by a memorial to Brahms (Brahms cube) and the place where he was born (there's just a stone with a plaque there now). The weather was nice, so we went to a cafe right on the Binnenalster lake. It then rained for about 15 minutes, but then it was ok again. Before we left we had lunch at a gourmet burger place named after a Grimm brothers fairy tale (Hans im Glueck), which they played in the bathrooms.

Limburg

We went to Limburg for a birthday brunch for one of Ben's colleagues. Afterwards we walked around the old town some, but it was very cold. Limburg has a lot of half-timbered houses. It is not where Limburger cheese comes from.

O Holy Night

It's time for this again!

Happy Halloween!