Hamburg, Germany

Monday 20th May 2019

The weather forecast had been for rain, which would have made for a far less fun morning of cycling. Luckily it started bright and then the clouds cleared and we got a lovely sunny day. We were all set for our alternative bike tour and headed to the meeting point in the Royal Theatre on floor 3.

While stood in the queue Vikki noticed everyone seemed to be holding paper tickets, we had nothing… reached the front of the queue to discover that we should have had paper tickets for all excursions in our state room and we couldn’t go anywhere without the paper ticket.

We were directed as to where to sit to wait while our tickets were reprinted, we got chatting to a couple of Americans who had been on the ship for 10 days and were looking forward to getting off for cycle. We also discovered we were in safe hands as the head of security of the ship was on our excursion and was our ‘ship escort’.

After being moved from group 11, to group 17 to group 18 we were eventually off the ship and onto a coach for a 10min drive to get the bikes. There were small and large bikes, the small of which were still slightly too big for Vikki, made more entertaining by the fact they had back pedal brakes and Vikki’s gears seemed to have a mind of their own.

Vikki discovered just how often she unconsciously back peddles but despite his best efforts, Steve failed to capture any of the near misses. However, even with the dodgy braking, gears with a mind of their own and the Vikki bashing basket it was great fun.  

We cycled past the red light district, the street where The Beatles used to live, saw a lot of ‘street art’, bounced over many cobbles and enjoyed an ice cream in the sun before cycling all the way back to the ship.

A quick lunch on the ship and then back out for a little wander round Hamburg and some souvenir shopping.

We then said farewell to Hamburg with a gin and tonic in the sun on the front of the ship.