Booking it to Hamburg: Weekend Adventures

I believe I've mentioned how horrible the "summer" weather is at least once or twice (or almost every day...). Well, we finally had a lovely weekend that could be spent outside without getting soaked. I admit, my wardrobe still wasn't screaming "August", but I'm trying not to be too picky.

Not only has the weather been pretty great, but I also managed to check a few activities off of my list -- and I didn't even initiate them! You see, after the sheer boredom of last weekend, I started a list of things to do when one is bored. And between Thursday and Sunday, I achieved four of them (technically five, but two kind of overlapped).

Thursday led me to Strandperle for a wonderful evening out with my friend Sorina. It's a cute little restaurant/bar/area righ on the Elbe River by the harbor. We took a nice walk to get there and then had Hugos to celebrate our girl's night out. Then I had a Wurst while Sorina chose a Fischbrötchen. Later we shared a Brezel and a brownie.

Strandperle

Unfortunately, it started to get a bit nippy, so we headed back to Sorina's for hot chocolate and her homemade Zwetschgenkuchen (plum cake). OK, two pieces of cake each.

Friday brought me out out to a Biergarten at Stadtpark to celebrate Kristi's birthday. It was quite a fun (and international!) gathering. Despite to August chill, we enjoyed being outside until it was time to move to the tent for some dancing. There was a great DJ and it was possibly some of the best dancing so far in Hamburg.

Saturday ended up being quite adventurous. It started with a visit to the Botanical Garden which then led to a trip to Blankenese. It's an area to I've wanted to explore for quite a while. You have to walk down a lot of stairs to reach the river and the German and I decided we didn't want to walk back up. So we waited for the ferry. But just as the ferry was about to arrive, we realized it didn't take us where we wanted to go. This new plan included walking to where the ferry would pick us up. Well, it seemed a lot closer on Google Maps.

Sorina's homemade Zwetschgenkucken

We ended up walking for almost an hour before we finally got to the bus...which took us to the S-bahn...which took us to the U-bahn. It was a great adventure, but it just took a bit longer than expected. And, of course, it always seems longer when you're hungry. Our idea of having a Fischbrötchen for lunch and a snack in the afternoon didn't really function without the second part of the plan. Of course, we survived, and then proceeded to eat a lot of snacks.

Sunday included another visit to Stadtpark to take advantage of the sun. Of course, the plan changed along the way, especially when an attempt at another park resulted in three locations with more and more ants. By the time we actually got to Stadtpark, we only had an hour before it started to cool down. This didn't stop me from seeing lots of naked old man butts though.