The long and beautiful road to (not quite Hamburg, but) Harburg

August 12th, 2012 Sunday

Are we going the right way?... Are you taking a picture??

We got to a bit of a slow start on Sunday as we took time to enjoy our first camping experience in Germany. There weren't many people camping in tents as it seems most Germans camp with smaller RV's (what they call Wohnwagen- voonvagon). We used are small cooking stove for the first time to make a can of beans (it worked!) and prepared for our journey.





 We headed out from the campsite, and quite soon after started heading the wrong way (we noticed this due to Alex's good sense of direction, and the lack of bike signs pointing the way, which our numerous) After getting ourselves on the right track, we stopped at a little restaurant called Seepavillion Weertzen  in Weertzen that was right next to a park and a lake that had a wonderful view, and even better food. With a little more energy to burn, we started putting in the kilometers.

our view at lunch

our view of lunch

We saw tons of blue sky, ongoing fields curbed with dense woods in the background, windmills, cows, and sunflowers. We definitely took some moments to stop and take it all in. We also hit a pretty long bit of cobble stone bordered with sandy gravel, which slowed our travel.

Alex takes a moment to stop and smell the sunflowers

i look quite windswept but its probably just helmet hair

As we got closer to Hamburg, we hit a misdirection or two and got ourselves just below the city in Harburg at a late hour. We were a bit too far from a campingplatz and a bit too tired to go into the city and look into hostels, so we opted for a bit of pampering and stayed at Panorama hotel in Harburg (which ended up being cheaper than our last night in Amsterdam). We took full advantage of the space, the shower, the comfortable beds and the 12pm check out time, all to ready ourselves to stop into Hamburg to seek out bike repair assistance.