Hamburg is so fun!

9am: Plante un Blomen
Went to Plante un Blomen, a botanical garden near Philip's place which has several themed gardens. Nice place for hanging out on a cool summer day and reading books on one of the benches there!

Entrance

cute purple ball flowers are the size of ur fist! :D

Wasserkaskaden (Water cascade)

Schachgarten

Me & Allison!

They have water machines for free play!

Damn cool!

Rosengarten (Rose garden)

So nice!

Tea house at Japanischer Garten

11am: Free walking tour

As usual, I went for Sandeman's free walking tour! Had a sandwich and Starbucks' Java Chip before that. Damn nice. So long since I've drunk Starbucks! ha.. Anyway, here are some of the sights we saw:

Rathaus. Magnificent building! Cloudy though.

View of the canal

Petrikirche

Kontorhaus

I love the building!

Chilehaus

Plague at the firm which produced poison gas during WW2!

Poodle on the building! XD

Statue on Trostbrücke

12:30pm: Shopping, eating, walking around!
Left halfway during the tour as Allison wanted to go shopping and buy postcards. Missed the interesting stories but oh wells, there's always the internet! Walked down Reeperbahn, the most famous Red Light District in Germany. Many sex shops, porn cinemas, but nobody on the streets since it was midday.

The famous Reeperbahn

Beatles Platz at Reeperbahn

There was an annual Wine festival (Weinfest) taking place in front of the Rathaus, so we decided to join in, eat and have some German Wine! :D Continued walking and talking along the way.... Went back at 6pm to meet Philip!

Weinfest

Riesling, Kerner, baked potatoes & Spätzle!

Fooooooood! :D

Memorial for WW1

Giant Champagne! :D

Hamburger Savings bank! :D

7pm: Dinner at Schanzenviertel
After resting our sore feet for an hour and chatting with Philip, we headed out to a German restaurant at Schanzenviertel to eat! As mentioned in the previous post, Schanzenfest was happening there... As we headed to the area, there were groups of impromptu people blasting loud music on the streets and mobile stalls selling food, drinks, clothes, collectibles, etc. People dancing, people drinking, people watching and people waiting for something to happen. As we continued walking, we saw many groups of 10-16 policemen & women standing at every corner of the street. Tensed and fully geared. Super interesting!!!

Rock bands playing on shabby stage

Bulky policemen with riot gears... COOL!

We went back after dinner and headed out again. It was 10pm at this time. I was so excited about the whole situation there! It was super duper tense!!!!!!! Streets were filled with garbage, messy and very crowded! Philip said that the riots usually start when it gets dark. We headed into a crowded alley and to my surprise, we saw the police using water cannons from afar! Tourists started taking pics (like me!) and we had a feeling the riots' coming our way, so we fled the scene! While fleeing, we heard loud bangs, like tables being overturned or something. IT WAS SO EXCITING!!!!!!!

Tensed atmosphere...

WATER CANNONS!! CAN U BELIEVE IT!!!

Schanzenfest led me to think about Singapore. How we don't have such things occuring. Not even a peaceful demonstration. If there were any similar events, it would be easily settled by breaking up the crowd, locking up the key persons and making a law that bans such event. However, this doesn't happen in Germany. Why don't they stop these riots? Why does the government let them demonstrate, destroy properties, injure people? In fact every year, police head down to Schanzenviertel in advance, in anticipation of the riots. It seems lame but think again, if they were to act and suppress the riots, the whole nation might protest, leading to a revolution! Uber cool. haha =X

12am: Long night of pubs and clubs

We have to visit Reeperbahn at night, when it is alive! So what's so interesting about Reeperbahn? Basically, there are lots of pubs, clubs, xxx shops, xxx cinemas, xxx people. Also, Philip said that it was the only place that allowed prostitution during Nazi occupation! Interesting... We went to London Pub, Rosi's bar which has a super hot French DJ playing super good mix of songs, Funky Pussy Club and 2 other bars. Ended up at Rosi's bar where the music was great!!

From the website. haha!

Silly drunk gal joined in our pic! So cute! haha

After dancing at Rosi's bar. It was 5am!

5:30am: Altonaer Fischmarkt
We followed Philip's advice, pubcrawling and clubbing till daybreak and head to the fish market for fish sandwich and more entertainment! The fish market was totally not what I have imagined. I imagined something similar to SG's wet market, where u have stalls selling fresh fish indoors. Instead, there were mobile stalls set up outside the "hall" and inside the "hall" was something similar to a Biergarten! There were tables, benches, live band performance on the stage, stalls selling beer and food. The atmosphere was very lively!! Sat in the hall for a beer and chatted with some Germans. They treated us to drinks!

Fresh fish!! Rare stuff in Germany!

YUMMY!!!

My first Jägermeister :D

Philip, me and Allison!

Hamburger! v(",)

Altonaer Fischmarkt

The habour!

Famous guy selling fishes. There was a huge crowd watching him sell!

Headed back to Philip's place and slept at about 9am. So tired!!!

1pm: Brunch!
Bidded farewell to Philip and headed out for brunch at a restaurant nearby. It's quite popular in Germany but it was my first time having brunch! Basically it's a buffet where they serve breakfast stuff and some heavier food such as potato salads, etc. It was ex! But there was a wide selection of food. Even DIY waffles!! Fun fun. Nice nice. :D

The restaurant

Colourful selection of food!

2pm: Reached the Omnibus station exactly at 2pm lar!! 2 minutes later and we could have missed our bus back!! Another scary event. haha..

6pm: Back in Berlin :)

Overall, I enjoyed the trip alot! Experienced so many fun, crazy and exciting stuff, drank alot, danced alot, shared alot with Allison and she with me... As I visit each city, I could tell that Germany is not a homogeneous country. Every city has their own flavor and so far, I'm loving it! haha.. Looking forward to more times hanging out with my frenz & colleagues! :D

Exhausted travellers :)