1/2 Day in Lüneburg

A lot of my friends and colleagues are currently taking 2-3 week vacations. They are heading to Italy and Spain and exotic islands (with sun!).

I spent last Wednesday afternoon in Lüneburg, a city about 45km outside of Hamburg. And it was great.

After hitting some traffic on our way, Sorina and I started with a big meal at the Brauhaus. I feasted on Schnitzel and potatoes which kept me full until I went to bed. Once we were reenergized, we made our way through the cute little streets.

The city is over 1,000 years old and I found the buildings to be quite unique. Once you're seen a couple smaller German town you *think* you've seen them all. Not so much. 

Our next stop was the Salt Museum. There are a couple of reasons that Sorina and I were destined to be friends and one of these things was the Salt Museum. I mean, it's the city's white gold, how could we not? With our entrance ticket we received a little packet of salt (to go with my pepper I received at the Spice Museum in Hamburg which I don't recommend...).

The museum was in German, so even though it may have taken us just a little bit longer to tour, we were really focused on our salt facts. We even got to taste some salt -- yes, it tasted just as it should have. We only skipped one part where you had to maneuver through a dark cave-like labyrinth. It felt more like a haunted house.

Without salt life isn't sweet. I kind of wanted to buy this tote bag.

Modern day people don't need as much salt as our ancestors.

Salt!

And then we rejoined the outside world and viewed the Rathaus. I've never met a Rathaus that fit into a camera shot.

Here we are in the very center most part of the town.

Rathaus

And then we moved on to churches. As someone who has seen her fair share of European churches, I thought I'd seen them all. But I was pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed St. Nikolai. I could have stared at the ceiling for hours, but it was time for dessert.

This door seemed like something my sister would like.

And then we made our way to the canal. It was so picturesque that we really struggled in choosing where to have our afternoon Kaffee und Kuchen.

So, we decided to go back to the Brauhaus and have dessert Knödel that we'd seen earlier but didn't have room for (second stomach!).

Marillenknödel auf Aprikosen mit Vanille und Mohn Lavendeleis. Lecker.

We tried to get into another church but it had already closed at 17:00. Basically the whole city shuts down by 17:00/18:00. Of course, we also peeked our heads in a few stores. The prices were a little better than in Hamburg. I bought something silly and fun for my mom and she'll have to wait a few months to see it :)

Lastly, we made our way to the Wasserturm (water tower). We bought our tickets at 17:40 as the man made sure we knew it closed at 18:00. I think he meant to say, "Are you sure you still want to pay €3,90 when you only have 20 minutes?" It was worth it. Every time I see a German city from above I am reminded of my high school German textbooks -- and that's not a bad thing.

If you're going to strike a pose, you need to commit 100%. I'm at about 75%.

On the way home we listed to the Navigation and took a different route home to avoid the traffic. It ended up sending us on some country roads which was actually a great end to the day because we saw some cows.

Overall, Lüneburg is really a cute and quaint little place to visit. Hopefully I'll return one day. In the meantime, I also recommend you check out my friend Kristi's blog on Lüneburg. She writes for a Canadian newspaper and had visited the week before. Here's the link. It's worth it if even just for the pictures. Just another reason it's time for me to get a new camera.